“Why nothing?” Eric paid attention to the men piling books. At first he thought that they were innumerable, the uniformed men coming like an infinite line of men and wheelbarrows, but he’d seen the same soldiers several times now, and he realized there must be only fifty or so of them.
“We have preparations to make. But come, I will show you why Federal is a fool.” Pope turned his chair and wheeled himself to the elevator. When he reached the doors, he looked back at Eric as if to say something, then frowned. “Where is your young companion?” Teach had gone. Puzzled, Eric said, “My grandson and two of his friends may have followed us here. Perhaps Teach went to look for them.”
Pope grimaced. “That complicates matters, but nothing can be done about it.” Another floor up, Pope led Eric into what looked like a fully equipped radio lab. Silver and black consoles packed a counter top that ran around the large room. Eric found the soft, electric lighting bouncing off the dust-free surfaces nostalgic, reminding him of his dentist’s office, everything clean and fingerprintless.
“Federal’s ambitions may be larger than the world. Do you know anything about SETI?” asked Pope as he flipped several switches. A low, subsonic hum that Eric felt in his teeth filled the room. Pope continued. “It was the Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. C.U. took part, as did numerous other universities, building huge radio dishes aimed at the stars specifically with the idea of picking up other civilization’s signals.” Two large speakers mounted next to the ceiling on shelves hissed into life when Pope rotated a dial on a console packed with needle gauges. Lightly, the smell of ozone and warming electrical components filled the room. “We never found any. Why not?” He twisted another dial, and the speakers crackled as Pope rotated through the radio bands. “The SETI project theorists struggled with several possibilities: one, we weren’t searching the right bands. Maybe extraterrestrial communicated with gravity waves or ESP. Two, our equipment wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up their signals, or three, we were alone.”
He threw a switch and spoke into a microphone. “Staff members,” he said, “take your positions. We are at…” He glanced at his watch. “…five minutes and holding. Wait for my signal please.” Then he continued, as if he hadn’t interrupted himself. “Millions of star systems with planets are within radio distance of Earth.” Pope hunched forward. The dial he reached for was an uncomfortable reach for a man in a wheel chair. “Millions of chances for intelligent life to develop, and it might have. But time is vast, and maybe intelligent life isn’t stable. Perhaps it’s an evolutionary dead end. Intelligence just flickers in time and we have missed it all around us in our own eighty-year radio flicker.” He rotated the dial from one extreme to the other, and only light static came from the speakers.
Assembled on the shelf next to the radio array sat an obviously home-made panel. Over a hundred toggle switches pointed down, each neatly labeled with a number. On the wall, along with other charts, diagrams and pictures, hung a map of the campus with corresponding numbers marking buildings and the gaps between them. Pope flipped a switch to one side of the panel, and small lights glowed red above all but two of the switches. He tapped them both with his fingernail. One lit, but the other stayed dark. He spoke into the microphone again. “Davis or Courtney, check connections on fifty-seven.” A speaker crackled on the radio panel, and a sexless, nervous sounding voice said, “Fifty-seven. Yes, sir.”
“What’s all this?” asked Eric. He bent down and looked past Pope’s knees and under the shelf. A massive bundle of wires from the panel plunged through a sloppy hole in the sheet rock.
“Old science for Federal,” said Pope. “As I said, we had warning he was coming. But I’ve always known about him. My real preparations started the summer I realized I wasn’t going to die in the plague, sixty years ago.”
Pope turned off the panel lights and sighed deeply, and in the sigh Eric heard a profound sadness. “It is difficult to accept, but all the evidence, all rational thought argues that humanity is the sole intelligence in the universe. There is no one out there.”
Pope went back to the radio array and rotated the dial again. Other than a steady beeping that Pope identified as a satellite signal, he found nothing. He said, “But I’m not scanning the stars anymore. My equipment is now tuned to receive Earth’s signals, and I have picked up no other stations for years. I am searching the right bands. My equipment is sensitive enough. Like the SETI project years ago, I am left with only theories to explain this. One, nobody else is signaling, or two, we are alone. Undamaged radio equipment must exist everywhere, in every corner of the Earth. The ability to power it, and the knowledge to use it must still survive if the percentage of surviving population is similar elsewhere as it was here. I now ask the same questions that deviled SETI. Why are the radio waves empty? Why has no one visited us?” Pope’s milky eyes blazed at Eric; his knuckles whitened on the wheel chair arms. The same voice broke in on the radio again. “Loose wire at fifty-seven. Should be good now, Sir.” Eric thought of the small parties of explorers who had left Littleton over the years, one trying for Colorado Springs, one for Kansas City, one for Salt Lake City, that had never come back.
“I have concluded that rational thought must argue all of the rest of human kind is dead. The planet is empty of intelligence except for this narrow strip in the Rocky Mountains,” said Pope.
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would we be the only ones left? Diseases don’t strike geographically.” Eric searched for an argument. Surely Pope must be wrong, he thought. Surely more than a few hundred people survived. But he thought again of Littleton’s isolation. Why hadn’t they been contacted? Where had all the young explorers gone? He said, “It didn’t miss Colorado. So many died here too!” Eric remembered sitting on his porch in Littleton the last few years. As the sun dropped below the peaks and cast their long shadows across the plains, he’d imagined little communities like his own, dotted across the country. Only space and the need to attend to the daily needs of survival kept them isolated. But the sense of those other people, the sure faith in their existence, had inspired him as he rocked in his chair watching the eastern horizon darken. A wall of pink-lined clouds had caught the last of the sun; an evening breeze ruffled the edge of the blanket he’d draped on his lap. He had been resting from a long day. We’ll fill the highways again, he’d thought. We’ll expand ourselves and be great again. Humanity has been set back, but this is only temporary. Knowledge will heal and bind us. He was ashamed to remember he’d then thought that the plague might have been a good thing. He’d thought that before, too. We were close to killing ourselves at times. Overpopulation, territorial jealousies, friction over historical occupation of the land had caused war and suffering. As the last of the sun edged the mountains pink, he’d thought, no one’s shooting at each other in the Golan Heights. They aren’t lobbing Molotov cocktails in Dublin anymore.