After finishing, Aki opened the floor to questions. The first question was the one she had prepared for most.
“What impact will this discovery of the messenger have on future UNSDF missions, and on a greater scale, the future of humanity?” asked a reporter.
“By utilizing the functionality of the messenger cell,” Aki responded, “we will be able to manipulate the Ring at will. The UNSDF spends billions, if not trillions, to use its fleet to dismantle the Ring as it rebuilds itself. Decoding the information stored in the messenger cells and overwriting that code would instruct the Ring to adopt a new structure. In other words, instead of undoing the damage every time it is built, we could prevent it from ever harming us again. Changing the instructions is the more proactive approach.”
“You’re suggesting that we insert a virus that causes the Ring to destroy itself?” the next reporter in line asked.
“The destruction of the Ring is not necessary,” Aki said. “My personal thoughts on this latest discovery are relevant to this. Many of us lost family members, everything we owned or cared about due to the radical climate change brought on by the Ring’s shadowing of the planet. Much of the earth and its species, which we have fought extremely hard to protect, have been destroyed. I have no idea if we can ever recover from such cataclysmic losses. I understand the antipathy that many of you feel toward the Builders. Those same feelings—the desperation, the rancor, and yes, the hate—brought me to the surface of the Ring itself. Uniquely among humanity, I took physical action against the Builders. However, now I have come to believe that it is not their intention to invade.
“I knew this from the moment I set foot on the Island and saw the defense system. It clearly had been designed to protect the Ring against damage from stray asteroids and comets. The Builders did not anticipate intelligent life that could possibly reach the Ring or sabotage it. Our encounter with the Builders is ultimately an unfortunate unintended consequence of their mode of interstellar travel. They meant no intentional harm. We have to ask ourselves whether we want to let our first encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence be characterized by anger and hatred. Do we have the right, without knowing anything about their civilization or culture, to banish them to the dark reaches of interstellar space?”
A few voices in the press corps murmured; to Aki the voices sounded positive. Hands shot up and then the shouting began. Aki waved her arms, signaling that she had more to say. “Please, please. I am not saying that we should surrender or leave the Ring intact as it is. Modifying messenger cells gives us the potential to control the Ring’s growth and orientation. As intelligent beings, as a species that has dreamed of contact with another intelligence, we have an obligation to rebuild the Ring, promptly, and allow the Builders to stop their fleet in our solar system. I suggest that we call the second Ring the ‘Vert-Ring.’
“If we alter the messenger cells so that the Vert-Ring regenerates perpendicular to its previous orientation, the detrimental shadowing effect on Earth will become negligible. A number of scientists agree that it would even help alleviate the greenhouse effect. If an unexpected threat to our safety emerges, we have the means to dismantle the new Ring at any time. There is no proof that it is too late to rebuild the Ring in time for their arrival. The most powerful telescope we have launched into orbit has yet to make visual contact with their fleet.
“The automated production facilities they built on Mercury are still in operation. As long as the production facilities continue to run, we will have several chances to perfect our influence over the messenger cells. Most importantly, the act of rebuilding the Vert-Ring would send a clear and unequivocal message that our intentions are not malicious. I believe that a civilization that mastered nanotechnology, nuclear fusion, and perhaps even antimatter could not accomplish such achievements without first overcoming the plague of intraspecies war. Let us not be consumed by suspicion. Let us set aside our fears and imagine the day when we will meet the Builders face to face. Let us see them as the benevolent and intellectually advanced beings that they must certainly be.”
More than a few journalists applauded.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, a secret meeting was held on a highly secure part of the Worldunity Network. The participants were all representatives of different forces—governmental, economic, scientific—but they did not know one another. Their voices were disguised. There was no visual component to the teleconference. They did not use, nor even know, one another’s names. Two men spoke, as was the tradition at these meetings, while the others simply listened, and these two men knew just what to say without prompting, briefing, or talking points in hand.
“Damn that Shiraishi. I think we underestimated her. Grossly,” said the first voice, a rich baritone.
“No chance of getting rid of her?” responded the second voice, which sounded tired, as if nursing a head cold.
“Not now. Too many questions, too many supporters.”
“That speech will turn the tables. Instant polling shows that 52 percent of North America is in favor of rebuilding the Ring ‘sideways,’ as the survey phrased it. And now only 46 percent support an assertive security posture.”
“That’s not much of a lead. Once the dust settles, we’ll regain ground.” The first voice laughed loudly, though it didn’t fit with the conversation. Something else must have happened in his location at that moment.
“Still, 74 percent are in favor of her messenger cell experiment. Success clinches their plan’s momentum.”
“It won’t be that easy. Decoding the human DNA sequence was touted as being promising, but look at how long it took to actually happen. They will spend years groping in the dark trying to figure out how to manipulate those messenger cells.”
“They have the top nanotech people.”
“Her speech was nothing more than a far-fetched personal pipe dream. What we need is to convince the public of the need for a preemptive strike against the Builders.”
“Is that even possible?” the second voice asked. “Given their technology, what could we bring to bear against them? If the answer is ‘nothing effective,’ then her plan may be the only logical alternative. Trying to rendezvous with an object moving at eighteen thousand kilometers per second is out of the question. Even attacking something moving that fast would be no easy task. The average speed of meteoroids is twenty kilometers per second when the meteoroids hit the atmosphere. The Builders are moving at nearly a thousand times that speed. The aggregate energy released from an Earth impact would be exponential, something like a million times as great. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs is estimated to have been ten kilometers across. With the speed the Builders are traveling, they could achieve the same effect with something one hundred meters across.
“With twenty thousand tons of matter, they could take us out by sacrificing a couple of ships in their fleet.”
“If they are planning to smash into us, their trajectory is clear. There’s only one straight line that connects Orion to Earth. We know exactly where they’re coming from. If we place an object in the way for them to collide with, we could forestall impact.”
“How? Gravitational force exists; you can’t just place an object in space and expect it to remain stationary, waiting for them to show up.”
“The best we can do is to locate their actual position and flight path.”