“What kind of speech?”
“One in your universal language.”
“Damn, lady. Someday I hope you’ll give me an easy request!” Raul tilted his head back and laughed. “I was afraid something like this would come up. What kind of speech do you have in mind? I assume we’ve gotten over the whole ‘Hi, we know some prime numbers and pi’ monologue?”
“Funny. Something more along the lines of ‘There are intelligent beings living in this solar system.’”
“That’s a no-brainer. Is that all, my noble savior of the aforementioned solar system?”
“We live only on the planet Earth, the third from the sun.” Aki appreciated his humor, but her need for his help was more pressing than her need for flattery from an old friend.
“You’ll save the fine print for later?”
“We will take the necessary steps to avoid situations that could be perceived as a threat.”
“Now you’re giving me the chance to show off. Care to end with a zinger?”
“We cannot take the risk of allowing a Trojan horse into our solar system,” Aki said.
“Ouch, now you’re putting me to the test. You’re already speaking in culturally specific metaphors.”
“You have to be able to handle this, Raul.”
“If you can tell me what it means first.”
“Humanity places doubt before hope,” she said, rephrasing her last message.
“Come again?”
“We fear an intelligence greater than our own,” Aki blurted, clearly upset.
“So you’re trying to say—”
“Damn it. Tell them to stay the hell away from people if they know what’s good for them!” she shouted, much more loudly than she had meant to. Several college kids playing Frisbee turned and looked at her, then went back to their game.
Raul placed his hand on Aki’s shoulder. “Take it easy. We’ll make this work.” He swiveled her shoulders, turning her toward him, then placed both palms on her cheeks. “Just promise me you won’t give up. A lot of people are counting on you to communicate with the Builders. Me for one, and several others at the ETICC at least.” He smiled and said, “We get criticism but plenty of letters of support. We’re missing some key piece of this puzzle. Have you considered that the Builders might be anosognosic?”
Aki’s facial expression made it clear that she did not know the word. Raul launched into a detailed explanation. “It’s where somebody suffers trauma to the brain. As a result, they lose left brain functionality. In some cases, they suffer from paralysis of the left arm, for example, and aren’t even aware of the paralysis. If a doctor asks if their left arm is okay, they answer that it’s fine. It’s a completely normal left arm. If they’re asked to raise their left arm, they think they’re raising it but nothing happens. If the doctor moves the patient’s left hand into view and asks whose hand it is, they respond that it’s the doctor’s hand.
“When the doctor shows both their two hands and the paralyzed patient’s arm and asks again, the patient claims that the doctor has three hands, and they’ll often launch into some cockamamy reasoning for the ‘extra’ hand that shows cognitive dissonance. They’re not crazy—in the sense that it’s a short circuit in their brain and they don’t think they’re lying or confused. They don’t find their reasoning strange because their perception is skewed. All that’s wrong is that their left and right hemispheres are no longer wired together. They are alienated from logical thought to the point where the illogical makes total sense. We have no idea how Builders think. Something that might be completely obvious to us could be a total mystery to them.”
Raul took his hands off Aki’s face.
“The world’s taking sides. There are doubters who think we should blow the Builders out of the sky before they get close enough to do us harm, and welcomers who see their arrival as a significant step toward a new era for humanity. But who’s right and who’s wrong? Maybe neither. Maybe the Builders are a mirror, reflecting back our hopes and fears of what they might be, of what we are—invaders, purveyors of peace, even gods from the heavens. This keeps us from seeing who the Builders really are because we force personas onto them. Maybe we’ll see what they really are and be unable to comprehend. Your job’s easy. All you need to find is the truth. We don’t need to love them or hate them. We need to find truth. Of all the people on Earth, Aki, my bets are on you to make that happen. I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
ACT IX: NOVEMBER 4, 2035
FIVE YEARS HAD gone by since the first day of the Builders’ arrival window. Scientists toiled, trying to improve observation systems. A new space telescope had been assembled in low orbit and was being transported to the third Lagrange point—exactly opposite the sun from the earth—where the gravitational equilibrium of the two bodies would hold it in place indefinitely. This way, if the sun happened to be blocking the view of HD 37605 from Earth when the Builders entered visual-contact range, the arrival would not be missed. Opposite the sun from the earth was also advantageous in using parallax to determine the Builders’ distance, once the Builders finally came into view.
After two months of testing, the twenty-meter composite main mirror was pointed at Orion and locked into focus. The lenses of the telescope revolved, each observing the target focal point at a different frequency of light and beaming their images back to Earth. Seated at the center of each image was HD 37605, which was universally considered to be the star from which the Builders had come. The recently enhanced Deep Space Network and the Terra Luna Network took turns relaying the new scope’s signal. The images were sent directly to the Space Telescope Operations Center at the ETICC where the images were double-checked by human eyes.
Theodore Pike had spent twelve years of his life scanning images for signs of the Builders. As the monotony got the better of him, he often did his job with his eyes half open. This day, however, Ted Pike’s boredom vanished in a flash. A new picture from the telescope appeared on his monitor. It was obviously anomalous, even though he had not been looking carefully. Even as the head image analyst, he was not always on his toes. Ted gazed at the 3-D luminosity variation graph as the image became more fully rendered.
“Image quality’s a bit off,” he said to the other analyst on duty, who spun his chair around to look at Ted’s screen.
“It’s from one of the brand-new image sensors.”
“Looks a little fuzzy, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, Ted. Hazy, fuzzy dots sprinkled around HD 37605.” Ted’s coworker pointed at the monitor.
“What did the previous shot look like?”
Ted brought up two images taken immediately prior and compared all three. There was no continuity of the anomaly. In the past, they had noticed that white noise appeared against the background blackness in overexposed images. The two analysts assumed that this was the same kind of visual static. They did not pay any further attention to it.
Four days later, another pair of analysts found the same anomaly. This time, the second pair of analysts shifted the telescope away from its target to see if the fuzzy dots were still there. They were not. The second pair of analysts conducted further observations, blocking out HD 37605 to study its mysterious light more closely. The analysts still needed to perform a full spectral analysis, but there was no doubt that they were seeing an object that was moving through space and emitting its own light.
As further detailed observations were being made, the members of the ETICC Board of Directors were summoned for an emergency meeting. A backup telescope was brought online, creating a miniarray to gather more light from the object over longer periods of exposure. The result was instantaneous and shocking. Observations and equipment were double- and triple-checked to be certain.