Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? (5 page)

Claire gathered her notes and walked quickly to the secure communications room to contact President Douthart.
All I can really tell him is that there’s good evidence the dots aren’t harmful
, she thought.
That’s good, but there’s so much we don’t know, including the big one—what the hell do the ETs want?

She found the President more friendly this time, almost chatty, but marked that down to the fact that the first time they talked, it was 3:00 in the morning. Or, she thought, maybe it was a habit from all the campaigning he’d done, or maybe he was just a nice person. Fortunately, he had some basic layman’s understanding about the strangeness of quantum and relativity physics. As Claire expected, he was relieved to hear the red dots appeared to be harmless, but frustrated that there was no communication with D9 and, the big one again, no indication of why they were approaching Earth, or what they wanted.

“One more thing I’d like to mention, sir,” Claire said, shocked at her own audacity. “I think it’s important for you to go on air to report to the public.” Her own words sounded as if they were spoken by someone else, and she noticed she was sweating and her heart was pounding. But she was glad she spoke up.

The President dropped his friendly tone. “What am I going to report? That we don’t know what these things are or if they even exist, but as far as we know, they won’t hurt anyone, although we have no idea what the aliens are trying to do?”

“It’s just my opinion, sir. It might help.”

“Thank you for your report, Dr. Montague. Goodbye.”

After he hung up the phone, Douthart leaned back in his chair, in his office in the secure bunker just outside the capital. Because it wasn’t expected to
ever be seen by the public or foreign leaders, the room had a utilitarian feel, with little decoration but obligatory high-tech communications and computer equipment, screens blinking tirelessly, covering most of the wall space and filling the desktops.

The President hadn’t bothered to turn on the room light, so the light from a lamp on his desk illuminated a small island around him in the dark room, making him look isolated, with a dark sky on all sides filled with white, yellow, and green stars and lines.

“Even NASA bureaucrats are telling me what to do now,” he muttered. He wondered if she could tell him what to do about North Korea threatening South Korea or about radicals trying to take over in Iran and close the Straits of Hormuz, or, or, or, or...

“Mr. President, you have a call from Ted,” his secretary said on the intercom. Douthart didn’t have time to talk to his son, but the thought of hearing a friendly, uncritical voice was irresistible. He had his secretary patch him through.

“Hi, Buddy, how’re you doing?”

“I’m great, Dad, how are you?”

“Oh, the usual,” Douthart said wearily.

“Right, Dad. Listen, you’re doing an unbelievable job and we know it’s so tough we can’t even imagine. Shoot, even harder than going on TV to announce your son is gay.”

“That was a piece of cake. The hard part was getting the news from you.”

“Yeah, you couldn’t figure out why I just didn’t go back to liking girls.”

“How’s that working out?” Douthart asked with a laugh.

“Not good, Dad. I’m afraid Harry wouldn’t approve,” Ted said, referring to his spouse. “You know Harry’s praying for you, too. He thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread.”

After a pause, Douthart said, “Thank you for calling, Buddy. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Dad. Bye.”

The President leaned forward on his desk on both elbows and put his head in his hands. After a few seconds, he put a call through to his press
secretary, Sarah Tillis, to set up an announcement that evening about the red dots and D9. He wanted to do it remotely from the bunker, but Tillis, in her usual patient, soothing style, convinced him it wouldn’t be believable for him to say the red dots were harmless if he was still in a secure location.

After the speech from the White House, which did seem to calm the public at least a little, Douthard got his first sound sleep in more than a week. Until just after 4:00 a.m., when, as he had instructed, he got a call about a major development regarding the aliens. It was Claire, her voice still husky after being awakened minutes earlier.

“D9 sent its first message,” she said.

E
ARTH
-S
HAKING

T
he fact that
the long-awaited message had arrived almost literally shook the earth. Sheer curiosity about the visitors from another world had become all consuming. Why did they send the red dots? Did they look like us? Where did they come from? What technology did they have? More urgently, governments and ordinary people desperately wanted to know if the aliens intended to harm them. What did they want? Why did they come? Just sending the message said a lot. It was sent on the same radio frequency that United Nations Extraterrestrial Command (UNETC) had used; leaders now knew the ETs had received and at least partially understood their messages. And sending the message showed they wanted to communicate with Earth. The content of the message, however, was still being deciphered.

After reporting to the President, Claire was driven from her guesthouse at Ft. Meade to Denver One, about twelve minutes away. Even before 5:00 a.m., the second-floor Language Unit buzzed with activity and excitement. The “Squirrel Cage,” or “Fun House,” as it was known, was a peculiar place, even by Denver One standards. Most people would consider the nerdish scientists and technicians on the first floor of the annex, obsessed as they were by disappearing particles and warped space-time, to be strange. But the first-floor workers themselves thought people in the Language Unit odd.

Like the rest of Denver One, the unit had its share of brilliant physicists and mathematicians, and used the same advanced computers. It had long been assumed the most likely way to communicate with aliens would
be through universally understood mathematical or physical properties. One language sent to D9 was a form of Lincos, or
lingua cosmica
, first developed in the 1960s. It used basic mathematics, such as numbers and arithmetic operations like addition, and logic symbols—for example, a symbol for “if and only if.”

But breaking codes required a step away from the predictable and into the unknown, especially if the sender of the message was an alien from outer space. The unit followed the model set by the highly successful World War II British code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park, which broadened its teams’ viewpoint by employing an assortment of chess masters, linguists, and crossword puzzle experts. The Language Unit expanded that to include computer programmers, video game wizards, and social media enthusiasts. But the unit expected all of its members to entertain and consider virtually any possibility, no matter how strange.

The most respected code breaker, the freest thinker, the oddest of the odd in the Squirrel Cage, was Ahmet Johnson. Not that he looked different. In his late twenties (like many at Denver One), of average height, with light brown skin and neatly trimmed hair, he wore the unofficial Denver One uniform: slightly wrinkled slacks and an inexpensive short-sleeved shirt.

What was unusual was his eclectic academic background. Even before he sped through a master’s in mathematics at Princeton (specializing in game theory), he had begun work on another master’s in archeology and ancient languages. He then completed controversial PhD work in linguistics, using mathematics to explain and predict changes in languages over time. His work history was just as varied. In addition to sweating out digs in the Middle East and poring over writings on millennia-old monuments, tomb walls, and papyrus rolls, he taught for a little while, and even worked very briefly for an investment bank. He also found time to produce a program allowing for more efficient messaging in social media.

Ahmet confided to his closest friends that he sometimes felt alien—a black kid with a funny name, spending year after year in classes with average, middle-class white kids. They weren’t mean, but they looked at him as something strange. And there was his unnatural gift for learning—turning in
test papers before anyone else was halfway done, answering questions that no other students even understood. He had a distinctly offbeat way of looking at things and a “weird” sense of humor. “I know it’s weird,” he told friends, “but I can’t help it.”

His other big difference from most Squirrel Cage inhabitants could be spotted immediately. While most at the annex either avoided looking someone in the eye or wore an earnest or distracted expression, Ahmet regarded other people with a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile on his broad face. He gave the impression that he was sizing up quirks in another’s appearance and personality with good humor, and in the situation, thinking of something amusing he might say or do.

Claire had gone directly to the reception area on the second floor and was engaged in tense discussion with Blake Ochoa and some Language Unit supervisors when Ahmet walked out of his office into the area. He had a serious expression, for once, as he scanned the printouts he was holding.

“Well, what’s the deal?” one of the supervisors asked impatiently as everyone fixed their eyes on Ahmet.

“Well, they answered in letters of the alphabet.”

Claire and the others were stunned. Almost everyone had expected the extra terrestrials to communicate directly in an artificial language like Lincos. “Into
our
alphabet?” said another supervisor with a gasp.

“That’s right,” said Ahmet, still looking at the printouts.

“What the heck did they say?” said an exasperated Blake.

Everyone stopped breathing as they stared at Ahmet.

“They said,” he began, and then paused for a moment, still looking at the paper. “‘Take me to your leader.’”

Shocked silence followed for a couple seconds.

“Damn it, Ahmet!” exclaimed Blake, as everyone started to laugh.

“Well,” said Ahmet with a sly grin, “it might as well say that. We’re sure it’s English, but it’s really hard to put the words together. No one has been able to make sense of it yet. It’s what we officially call gobbledygook. At the same time, they sent messages in thirty-five other languages—the European languages, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi… We’ve checked with our
contacts in other countries, and no one else can put together a coherent message either.”

Freed from the tension that gripped them before Ahmet’s report, Claire and the others slouched in their chairs as they tried to digest the latest news. Why did the aliens communicate in written Earth languages, and in so many of them? Why was the message “gobbledygook”? If the messages could be deciphered, would they say the same thing in every language?

Claire left soon after, to prepare a report for the President. This time the contact was like the first call—“to the point,” with no confrontation.

Later that afternoon, while she was standing at her desk sorting through papers, Ahmet walked in.

“Oh hi, Ahmet, anything new?”

“No, not really. Still can’t figure out what the message means in any language.”

Claire looked at him questioningly.

“I, uh, was just wondering,” he said, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You know, Claire, no one knows what’s going to happen with the D9 thing. It could be pretty bad. You know, I have an apartment just down the street, or, you know,
you
have a place pretty close…”

“No,” Claire said. She got back to sorting her papers.

“Oh, sure,” said Ahmet as he turned to leave. “Sure. Never mind. See you later.”

Within a minute, though, he’d walked back into the room. “Listen, Claire, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“How did you mean it?” she asked, still looking at her papers, but now with a slight smile on her face.

“Well, that we’d be friends.”

“We
are
friends, Ahmet.”

“Really, still? That’s great, Claire. I’m glad about that.” And he turned to leave again.

“You might talk to Karen in NEO Project Liaison,” said Claire, still not looking up. “I think she likes you.”