The limo entered UC Berkeley, navigating the labyrinth of narrow campus streets. Aki looked up at Sather Tower. A Worldunity site had told her it was usually called the Campanile. They stopped at the entrance of the Extraterrestrial Intelligence Communications Center, ETICC, a plain, four-story structure that looked out of place amidst the beautiful architecture of John Galen Howard’s “City of Learning.” The building was a military facility surrounded by a twelve-foot tall razor-wire fence. Military guards with guns were stationed at the entrance. Aki fished her laminated card from her briefcase, then clipped the ID to the lapel of her black blazer.
In 2022, shortly after the destruction of the Ring, the ETICC had been established to contact the Builders. Sixteen years of unanswered transmissions had followed. Once Aki and her team had discovered that the Ring was a laser-powered braking system for alien ships, the gaze of the world’s ringologists had turned to HD 37605.
The ETICC netlinked observatories across the globe to scout for the still-hypothetical armada and transmit messages. At first the observatories had used satellites in geostationary orbit to send a contiguous signal to HD 37605. Eventually a laser transmitter was launched into a heliosynchronous orbit and was thereby able to beam a constant signal unaffected by the earth’s rotation. Constructed for the purpose of contacting the Builders, the heliosynchronous laser transmitter was not comparable to the Builders’ handiwork, but it was the most powerful laser humans had ever designed. If the laser transmitter were harnessed for power, it could have powered the world.
AKI KNEW LITTLE about Dan Riggins, the director of the ETICC. Entering his office, then shaking his hand, she realized that he was at least twenty years older than she, which meant he was twenty years older than she would have guessed. Such a large percentage of the scientists were of Aki’s generation that it had become unusual to work with someone as mature as Commander Kindersley or Dan Riggins. At first glance, Riggins struck Aki as cautious, maybe even nervous.
His demeanor surprised Aki enough that she was unsure where to begin. Despite her innate shyness and reticence, Aki had learned to exchange pleasantries with heads of state. With kindred scientists, she preferred to avoid formality, skipping protocols when she could. She decided that her hesitation came from being unable to decide whether Riggins was a scientist or a policymaker.
“Allow me to start by saying that this is not a UNSDF inspection. I am here to assess why we have not received a response from the Builders, but it is for personal, scholarly reasons,” Aki said.
He smiled politely. If she read his eyes correctly, he was suspicious of her presence.
“We hoped for immediate results,” Aki continued, “but we are all frustrated on this, and I have wondered if the problem lies in the science informing the contact attempts.”
The director appeared to relax a bit, perhaps because he was beginning to see the tack of her argument. He asked Aki to take a seat on the sofa.
“What would you like to drink?” Riggins asked.
“Tap water if it will not make me sick.”
He removed two sealed bottles from a drawer, opened hers, and then sat.
“The ETICC pretends to stay optimistic. Have you heard of SETI? It was a similar situation. My mentor was heavily involved at the very beginning.”
“I am somewhat familiar with Frank Drake’s Ozma Project, aiming a scope at Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani and hoping to see the unseen.”
The director smiled. “The same. SETI sent messages, but of course mostly just listened in on the stars as it were. Then Project Phoenix, even the Interstellar Message Composition Project, which sought to express the human ideal of reciprocal altruism as well as the supposedly universal scientific and mathematical concepts we have often tried. Decades of hope, trying to find a response from intelligence outside our solar system. All the assumptions that ‘they’ were out there, that we couldn’t be the only forms of life that evolved as far as we did. Several hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone. You know all this.”
“No. Please continue. This is why I am here. I know less about SETI than I do most of astrophysics, mostly because SETI never discovered more than some scintillation or atmospheric twinkling.”
“When the project began, we weren’t pretending. We imagined that we would make contact right away, having finally found intelligent life out there. We pointed our antennae and figured we would tune in the radio signal just like I did in my car this morning. Instead, nothing came. SETI did this for forty years. I’m going to do this until I die. Every wavelength, consistent disappointment.”
“I have stood on that Ring. I know that whoever built that ring can hear us,” Aki said.
“Did you know that I started this before the Ring even came along? I was convinced there was alien life before the concept flipped around.” Riggins offered a dry laugh. “Now the UFO skeptics are the conspiracy theorists. We believed the signal would come first, never imagining that a giant object would just be constructed in local space, right in front of us. You brought proof and they’re, what? Four-tenths of a single light year away. Ten times closer than the nearest star. It was an opportunity to redeem SETI. With the ETICC, we knew they would reply. We just knew it. All we do is listen. It couldn’t have taken our signal more than ten months to reach them and for them to respond.”
“You have not failed. The distance, the braking time frame for the deceleration lasers. Technically, those are guesses, Mr. Riggins.”
“Sure. The calculations could be botched, but I need to be realistic. It’s two and a half times longer than the most conservative scenario. Two years with no response. It’s time to face the facts.”
“One question.”
The balding man leaned his head forward and adjusted the knot of his tie.
“How do you know they have noticed our transmissions?”
“Because their evolution is so far ahead of us that it makes us look like we’re going backward.” He straightened his shoulders. “The chances are nil. Maybe they would overlook radio waves, but I know they can detect a laser. That Perpetual Happiness almanac puts their light in the sky six centuries ago and proves that their laser is within our visible spectrum because that teahouse proprietor saw it. Even if their eyes are radically different and work along a different swath of the spectrum, you have to figure that the Builders would use a light that they could see too. They would choose beams they could see for when it was time to decelerate. Tell me that we’re aiming wrong, tell me that four-tenths of a light year is far enough away to be grossly inaccurate, maybe it’s even dissipation and we don’t realize it—but don’t tell me they can’t see it.”
“Could their sensors be blinded by sunlight and unable to distinguish between the two because they blur on the visible spectrum?” Aki asked.
“Sensors? Maybe. Eyes? Unlikely. Our laser’s monochromatic, different than sunlight. It would be a sharp peak on any optical spectrum. Relatively, the sun looks weak from that far away. There’s no way it could drown out the brightness.”
She had to concede that he was right. The ETICC’s satellite used an ingenious laser that changed its frequency, sending a range of wavelengths but ranging across the entire visible spectrum. Even if it needed to land on a certain frequency to communicate with the Builders, there would be times when the beam would coincide. “Given that the Builders detect it, do they realize it is encoded?”
“Here’s the theory: to make sure the deceleration laser is functioning, they must be able to check its beam of light, in case it’s blocked by a comet or even a meteoroid. No amount of scatterplotting can predict that stuff with enough accuracy. They monitor their beam, or any beam that matches, right?”