“Good reflexes. Thank you, Joe.”
He stared at the two balls in his hands, then his fingers curled into fists. He opened his hands and gaped. The balls were gone!
A chill washed over him, and his breathing turned quick and shallow. A knot formed in his stomach.
“There is no reason to be frightened, Joe. You are fine. You were injured, but everything seems to be sufficiently repaired.”
Repaired? Like a toaster? And sufficiently? Sufficiently for what?
He drew several deep breaths, trying to slow his racing heart. “Please answer my questions. Who are you, and where am I?”
“Joe, I am a simulation of a human being, designed to communicate with you.”
“Yeah,” Joe snorted, “and I’m Jim Thorpe, the greatest athlete ever.”
There was silence for a few seconds, then, “I’m sorry. You told me earlier your name was Joseph William Colsco. Did I misunderstand?”
“All right! Enough of this shit! Who the fuck are you, and where am I?”
“Joe, do you see the bar next to you?”
“What?”
“The bar, Joe,” insisted the voice.
“There’s no bar—” Joe glanced to his side and scowled at a two-inch-thick bar about eight inches above the end of the platform and curving to connect to the two corners. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Where . . . ?”
“Please hold onto the bar.”
Joe placed his right hand lightly on the bar.
“Do not be alarmed. Please hold onto the bar to avoid injury.”
“Injury from wha—” His feet left the floor. Joe gasped and clutched the bar with both hands as he floated, attached only by his death grip on the bar, his mind blank of any thought except holding on.
The sensation of weight slowly returned, and he settled back onto the platform, keeping a firm grip on the bar with his right hand and his left hand gripping the edge of the platform. His mind was frozen, waiting for an explanation.
Finally, he croaked, “What happened?”
“The gravity in your room was adjusted to zero to prove you are no longer on your planet. You are in a vessel at a Lagrange point.”
“Lagrange point?” The part of his mind still reasoning drew from a classroom memory. One of the points in space relative to the Earth where an object stays in a stable position with respect to the Earth while they both orbit the Sun. He remembered the balance between gravity and orbital motion caused the stability. He thought there were several such points, but all he could remember were the ones where the Sun, the Earth, and the Lagrange point were in a line, Sun-point-Earth, Earth-Sun-point, point-Earth-Sun, and point-Sun-Earth.
“That’s not possible,” Joe whispered, another chill raising the hairs on his back and arms. “How can I be at a Lagrange point?”
“How do you think it would be possible?”
Joe froze. To answer would make the impossible possible.
“Joe, how might you be at a Lagrange point?”
Joe’s brain seized, trapped in a vortex. The voice repeated the question at thirty-second intervals until Joe swallowed and choked out, “A spacecraft?”
“Very good, Joe. Yes, you are on a spacecraft.”
“How did I get into space and whose ship is this? Ours? Russians’? Chinese?”
“What do you think, Joe? Which of them could have adjusted the gravity in this room?”
Joe’s mind raced, rummaging frantically for plausible answers. He was on Earth, and they faked the floating? No. No way to do that on Earth. And what about the slowness of the bouncing balls? Some secret NASA, military, Russian, whomever or whatever? Nothing fit. But it had to be one of these, didn’t it?
Joe’s grip on the bar tightened even more, as he eliminated all possibilities except one. The blood drained from his face.
“Can you think of an answer, Joe?”
“No,” he said in a small voice.
“Then what is left?”
He was silent for a full minute. Joe was cold and sweating at the same time, his throat constricted, his heart pounding. “A spaceship not made on Earth?”
“That is correct, Joe. This craft did not originate on your planet.”
I’m insane, dreaming, or hallucinating.
Joe scrambled for an explanation he could understand. Acceptance came only after more demonstrations of gravity manipulation, and when one wall turned transparent and he could see the Earth in full view. At first, it was a small orb of blues, browns, and greens. Then it grew closer—magnified, he assumed—until it filled the wall. He stared for some time, long enough to notice the view had the Earth’s surface in total sunlight. The only way the surface could be in complete sunlight was if the vessel was positioned between the Sun and the Earth.
This must be the L1 Lagrange Point, his mind dredged up. So the Sun must be behind us to get this view. The Sun-point-Earth Lagrange arrangement. Only when the wall changed back to white, and his heart rate returned closer to normal did his mind accept as possible the option that couldn’t be true. The voice was silent, waiting for him to initiate. He didn’t know what to say or ask, as his mind tried to gather itself.
“Do you need more evidence, Joe?”
“No. It must be true, or I’m insane.” After a moment, he said, “Hey, wait a minute! If you’re supposed to be some kind of alien, how do you speak English and how do you know about Lagrange points?”
“All languages can be understood with sufficient samples, such as the broadcasts emanating from your planet. I assumed your language was English, based on the position of your aircraft. As for knowing the name for the Lagrange points, among the electromagnetic emanations from Earth are education programs. Joe, you are on a vessel near your planet, both orbiting your Sun.”
Joe’s mind whirled, unable to settle on a single thought for more than a fraction of a second before careening off in other directions.
When Joe didn’t speak, the voice repeated, “Joe, do you understand you are on a vessel orbiting your Sun?”
“You mean an alien spaceship?”
“A vessel not of your planet. Yes. An alien spaceship.”
“Who are you?” Joe whispered.
“I am a simulation of a human being, designed to communicate with you.” The same statement, word for word, the voice had used when Joe first asked the same question.
“Simulated? Designed? You mean you’re a computer program or AI?”
“You may think of me as an AI, an artificial intelligence, as the closest analogy to your species’ technical level.”
“Who made you? Who made this vessel?”
“That information is not important for you to know, and I am not authorized to give an answer.”
“Why am I here? What do you want of me?”
“A malfunction of the systems of this vessel caused it to accidently destroy your craft. There was a temporary single sub-atomic systems fault that would normally have been corrected by redundant subroutines, except for coinciding with a routine reboot of a process whose role was monitoring the reliability of subroutines. Unable to confirm reliability, blocks of subroutines shut down or paused, affecting both the vessel’s cloaking technology, making it momentarily visible, and stopping the processing of external sensor data.”
“A computer crash? You’re saying you crashed into my plane because your systems glitched?”
“A crude but accurate assessment. It took two seconds to recognize the faults from the initial quantum error and make the necessary corrections. Unfortunately, in those two seconds, our vessel transited thirty-eight miles and, for a brief instance, attempted to occupy the same volume of space as your airplane. Not unexpectedly, the attempt failed.”