Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? (4 page)

“God damn it, you about broke my shoulder!” a young woman blurted at an older man who had lost control of a heavy bag he’d pulled from the bin.

“Can you wait one fucking second?” a rotund man in a business suit hissed at another heavy-set man, who was trying to push into the aisle in front of him.

Some flight attendants and a few passengers, like Claire, tried to help and calm the passengers, with limited effects. Once everyone was in the jet way, the stampede was on. People rushed as fast as they could through the packed walkway, pushing slower passengers and tripping over baggage. Some people left their carry-ons behind; although the airport baggage system was operating normally, many passengers even left their check-in luggage at the airport.

The actual, visible appearance of something alien completely upended the tenuous peace of mind most people had settled into soon after the news that D9 had been spotted. That was partly because that calm was based on some hopeful self-delusions. Maybe the scientists were wrong; maybe D9 was
just a space rock. Maybe it was a spacecraft, but wouldn’t make any contact with Earth. Maybe it didn’t even know Earth was there. And anyway, they said it wouldn’t arrive for weeks. A lot could happen. Maybe it would explode or change course. Maybe … who knew?

The sudden appearance of the mysterious red dots destroyed all those delusions. “They” knew humans were there, and had started to interact with people on Earth. And for some reason, with tangible evidence of alien life in front of people, it was hard to maintain fantasies of a peaceful and friendly contact. A flood of rumors about mass death and destruction from the red dots resulted in a spike in fear.

Claire picked up her suitcase at the semi-deserted baggage claim area. She soon found that phones were still jammed, and email service patchy. Getting a rental car to go to Denver One, a NASA annex in northern Washington, D.C. used by the Space Policy Team, was out of the question, as the rental offices were locked and abandoned. Claire wandered back to the greeting lounge, where she saw a short, muscular young man in an ill-fitting suit holding a sign with her name on it.

“I’m Claire Montague,” she said.

The man looked at her and at the picture he held in his right hand. “Please show me your government ID,” he said. After checking the ID, he said, “I’ve been approached by a dozen Claire Montagues looking for a ride, and a couple were men.” After showing Claire his own ID, he led her to the parking lot to drive her to Denver One.

“What’s the latest on those red dots?” she asked as they walked.

“Sorry, I can’t discuss that in a non-secure area,” he said, ducking into the car and starting the engine.

Geez
, thought Claire.
We’re alone in a government car. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll tell on him if he says something
.

She looked out the window as they passed long stretches of empty streets, punctuated by areas of traffic jams with occasional frantic looting, rioting, or burning buildings or cars. At some sites, police cars, ambulances, or fire engines added to the scenes of chaos with flashing lights and wailing sirens.

About half way through the ride, Claire sat up and said out loud, “Oh.”
The dots are messages
, she realized. They’d thought maybe the aliens didn’t respond to Earth’s messages because it was a robot spacecraft.
But what the hell are they trying to tell us? What are these red dots?
Ignoring the occasional scenes of desolation that slid by, she mulled over the possibilities with growing excitement. Surely the elite team at Denver One had picked up some clues.

Denver One turned out to be a run-of-the-mill government building—rows of depressing cubicles interspersed with more spacious but equally sterile conference rooms. One difference was the presence of a wide array of the latest in computer and telecommunication equipment. The first thing Claire noted was that the lobby, the largest open space, had been taken over as an operations center. People stared intently at monitors or hurried around with papers in hand, paying no attention to Claire or other newcomers.

Then Claire turned with disbelief to the back of the room on her left. There, like a relic left by a long-ago tenant or as proof scientists had a sense of humor, stood and old-fashioned portable chalk board with a well-worn wooden frame. A long-haired man sitting nearby, in front of a TV, put down his earphones, walked up to the board, and quickly wrote a number with a piece of chalk. Pale, white patches on the board showed where information had been erased and updated.

“Claire,” called out a smiling, middle-aged man. “Welcome to our 19
^th
-century alien tracking center,” he said, with a sweeping gesture of his left arm to show her the blackboard.

Claire walked up and hugged the man—Blake Ochoa, one of her bosses from her days at NASA headquarters, now the Denver One director. He was a bit more bald and heavy, but still chronically cheerful.

Blake was originally drawn to Claire by professional respect. Her PhD dissertation at the California Institute of Technology on neutrino astronomy was frequently cited in scholarly papers on the search for dark matter—the elusive material thought to make up most matter in the universe.

But Claire had decided to forego a promising career in research to expand her horizons. First she’d served in NASA’s Chief of Staff’s office, impressing Washington, D.C., headquarters executives—including Blake—with her
problem-solving and leadership abilities. She then worked as a senior research analyst at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, a nonprofit organization in Mountainview, California, which searched for extraterrestrial intelligent life with some support from NASA grants. At the Carl Sagan Center at the Institute, she helped find planets outside of the solar system. After two years there, it was on to CSS.

After Blake got to know Claire at Washington, D.C., the two open and caring people became good friends. He happily assumed the role of mentor and big brother in Claire’s life.

“Blake, listen, I hate to do this,” Claire said in a low voice. “But I haven’t been able to contact my son, and I’m worried. Is there some way…”

Blake nodded toward a conference room down the hall and said, “Come with me.” Once in the room, he picked up a phone and said, “I can get you through to CSS in Tucson, and they should be able to get you through locally.”

“Thank you so much.”

“I’m sorry, but be quick,” Blake said. He handed her the phone, turned to leave the room, and shut the door.

To her great relief, when she got him on the phone, Claire found Sam in good spirits. Aunt Mae and Grandpa and Grandma Montague had carefully monitored the news he got about the red dots and framed it as an adventure. After a few minutes, Blake popped his head into the room.

“Well, I’ll call you again as soon as I can,” Claire said, with tears running down her cheeks. “I love you, Sammie Bammie. Take care of Aunt Mae and Granpa and Granma. Bye.”

“He’s OK?” Blake asked.

“He’s just fine.” Claire began to dab at her eyes with a tissue while they walked back to the lobby. “I would pick today to wear mascara.”

As they approached the “alien tracking center”—she would soon learn that staffers called the area around the ancient blackboard the ATC—an intense-looking young woman went to the board, erased a number in the “Reported Deaths, US” column, and wrote another one. There were also columns for “Confirmed Deaths” and “Other Contacts, Confirmed” in the US and columns for overseas figures.

Claire asked, “Well, what do we know about the red dots?”

Blake lost his smile and sighed. “Damn little. Almost nothing. We’re pretty sure they’re not harmful … at least not yet.”

A relieved Claire said, “Great. Has the President gone on air to let people know?”

“Hmm, no. The President is in a secure location.”

Claire’s heart sank; she recalled the rising panic among passengers on her flight as the pilot failed to offer reassurance. “Now I know why I didn’t vote for him.”

“Don’t tell him that.” She looked at Blake inquisitively, and he said, “That’s right, you’ll be the team’s contact, in charge of relaying major developments to Douthart. It seems he liked your style. I think the Commander-in-Chief’s exact words were ‘to the point.’ You’ve got to make your next report in … forty-three minutes.”

“Well this time I’m going to tell him to get his butt out there and talk to the public.”

“Sure you will.”

I will
, thought Claire.
If I can keep my nerve
.

“First we have to get you up to speed on what we know. Claire Montague of CSS, this is Bridgette Harpin and Doug—it’s Doug, right?—Oesterlich from NASA HQ. They can give you the background.”

“So you’re the one who started all this,” said Bridgette, referring to Claire’s work at CSS.

“Guilty, but I had accomplices.”

Claire sat down and first got the bare facts and the good news. Careful estimates put the number of red dots at more than twelve thousand, spread more-or-less evenly throughout the world. Apparently they were all the same shade of red, and between three and forty-five feet in diameter.

No deaths or injuries had been reported by reliable law enforcement or scientific sources as directly caused by the dots. Unconfirmed news reports from normally credible outlets told of eighty-one deaths in the US and 733 in other countries, directly linked to the dots. But almost all of these reported deaths had been checked by reliable authorities and found to be untrue, which
led the team to discount news reports of deaths until they were confirmed. The team stopped counting deaths reported in non-standard news outlets and social media after the total ran into the tens of thousands. Additional traffic accidents and even tramplings had caused accidental deaths and injuries in the US and beyond, according to confirmed reports.

Reliable examinations by government and other scientists from around the world found no chemicals, viruses, or other biological agents coming from the red dots, and no radiation except for visible light. Trusted medical teams found no harmful effects in people, plants, or animals exposed to the dots. There were no abnormalities in the autopsies of lab animals that had been place on or near the dots. DNA tests revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Then the findings got weird. The dots contained no detectable matter—no solids, liquids, or gases. Just as strange, the exact wavelength of the light from the dots, and even the precise
size
of the dots, were immeasurable. They were there—you could see them. But they weren’t there.

As Claire listened, wide-eyed, to the report, one word immediately popped into her head—quantum. Quantum physics revealed actions of matter and energy in the sub-atomic level that defied common sense. One experiment, for example, seemed to prove that light was made up of waves. But a different experiment showed light must be made of particles. Physicists were forced to conclude that light was both a wave
and
particle. Some sub-atomic components popped into existence out of nothing and then quickly disappeared completely. Sometimes actions in one particle would instantly cause the same actions in another particle, even when there was no connection or communication between the two. This was the so-called “entanglement.”

There were other areas of physics that could give rise to strange results as well. Relativity physics, for example, presented the possibility that there were distortions in space-time, called wormholes by some, that allowed travel to far-distant places and times. The theory of relativity, among other things, stated that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light—about 186,000 miles a second. But shrinking space-time in front of an object might allow it to reach a Star Trek-style “warp speed” that was faster than the speed of
light. Study of elusive dark matter—one of the topics in Claire’s specialty of neutrino astronomy—and the even-more-prevalent dark energy might reveal amazing secrets. Dark energy was the mysterious force the many scientists thought filled all space and accounted for the ever-accelerating expansion of the universe. Some incredible theories were just speculation, such as the possibility that there were many more universes in addition to Earth’s. And Claire always reminded herself there were probably fantastic phenomena that hadn’t even been imagined yet.

But the creatures controlling D9 had somehow devised technology to take advantage of some of the mysteries of quantum physics, or of other types of esoteric physics.

“And there’s something we just found out about D9 itself,” added Doug. “You know the survey teams have been checking for earlier course changes and trying to get a clue of where D9 came from. They’ve been going through old images to try to trace D9’s route before you guys first discovered it.”

“Yes, that was a few weeks before we were able to confirm D9 wasn’t your average asteroid,” Claire said.

“Well,” said Doug. He took a deep breath. “Your guys at CSS think that they’ve traced it back eight days, but then it disappears, like it never existed before.” He looked at Bridgette, as if he’d delivered as much mind-bending information as he cared to, and wanted her to take over.

She explained that LINEAR—another part of the NASA NEO program, with a telescope in New Mexico—had found an object in its assigned section of the sky that had disappeared at the exact time D9 appeared in CSS images.

Claire sat back and tried to absorb the information. “You mean D9 seemed to make some sort of leap to get closer to the Earth?”

“No,” said Bridgette matter-of-factly. “It was actually more of a lateral step backwards, slightly farther away from Earth. And we have no idea why, let alone how, this happened.”

“Man, there’s a lot of things only the aliens can explain,” Claire said. “What’s the meaning of the red dots? How did they get here? Why did they
send them? What happened to D9 when it disappeared and appeared again? Has there been any evidence of communication, anything at all?”

Nothing, Bridgette and Doug said—no discernible deliberate changes in electromagnetic patterns, or in anything else associated with the dots or from D9.