“Damn,” Elvis said, leaning forward on the broad steering wheel as he turned a corner. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“You can’t be serious,” Bower cried, talking over the radio. “You actually want to shoot first and ask questions later?”
“If we don’t shoot first, there won’t be a later,” Elvis replied, with a cocky tone that conveyed surety. He was chewing on some gum as he spoke. “You ever think of that, Doc? I mean, seriously, sure, we all wanna get along, but these are aliens. We’ve got to show them we’re not to be messed with. Peace through strength, it’s the only way, Doc.”
“What about peace through understanding?” Bower replied, turning the radio down.
“You’re talking to a grunt,” Jameson said, intervening in the discussion. “Army life is all about peace through hierarchies, peace enforced by authority.”
“Please tell me there are cooler heads in Washington,” Bower replied. Elvis didn’t seem fazed by the implications of his comments at all. “Peace should be the default, not war. After a hundred thousand years, you’d have thought we’d have figured that one out by now.”
“It’s all about agendas, Doc,” Elvis replied. “See, sarge is right. We have peace by adhering to a chain of command. For us, peace is something to be enforced with the threat of violence. Peace ain’t no picnic by the lakeside in summer. And so, you gotta ask yourself, Doc, why are they here? What’s their agenda?”
“I… I don’t know, but that’s not a bad thing. We’ll know soon enough. We don’t have to assume hostile intent.”
“We do if we want to stay alive,” Elvis replied.
“And if they were hostile,” she asked, “what could we do about it? This isn’t some Hollywood movie where all you’ve got to do is get down their shield so our planes can fire missiles at them.
“Imagine what would happen if a bunch of bushmen tried to attack you Rangers. Even if they got a spear away, you’d mow them down. They wouldn’t stand a chance. The difference between us and these aliens is going to be orders of magnitude greater. Any aggressive act by us would be suicidal.”
“Better dead than red,” was all Elvis would say in reply, quoting an old Cold War mantra. Bower was tempted to take things further, but there was no genuine interest in debate on his part. Bower was frustrated by his close-minded attitude. Her words were falling on deaf ears.
The radio broadcast was still going, the topic grabbed her attention so she turned up the radio.
“We actually know quite a lot about them already,” said a woman in calm tones. “We know they’re bound by the laws of physics. They didn’t just materialize in our sky, they approached us over several months, and that tells us something important about their technology. Their spaceship is more advanced than any of ours, but not by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, probably just in the order of a few hundred years to a thousand years at most.
“Bear in mind, given the immense age of the universe and the almost four billion years during which life has evolved on Earth, a gap of a million years between intelligent species from different planets would not be unrealistic. If anything a gap of a million years would be quite small. That these aliens appear so close to us from the perspective of the physics we see in use is actually encouraging.
“If the physical appearance of their craft is any indication to go by, their technology is based around what we would call biology. But, biology is simply physics applied to chemistry. Their craft appears almost organic, whereas our spacecraft are functional, designed without any regard to aesthetics. Their craft appears to be alive. Now, that could be an illusion, but spectroscopic analysis and radar suggests the spacecraft we see is a living organism rather than a collection of nuts and bolts.
“As for their possible physiology, we can draw some clues from their approach within our solar system. Bear in mind that in slowing down over a period of months, they could choose any particular speed they wanted. If they slowed themselves faster, they’d arrive earlier, that’s all. But that they slowed at one sixth of the acceleration we feel on Earth, roughly the same rate as gravity on the Moon, suggests this was a comfortable approach for them. If this assumption is correct, then they’re probably not going to be too comfortable here on Earth. Our gravity wouldn’t crush them, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. It would be like carrying your mother-in-law around on your back everywhere you went.
“Now some people have raised concerns that all we’ve heard from the craft is a single, repeated message declaring their peaceful intentions. They wonder why we haven’t heard anything beyond that, thinking we should have established some kind of dialogue with this alien species by now. It’s been pointed out that the alien message was in every known language, including some that are geographically confined and essentially redundant, so the alien creatures seem proficient in communicating. But, again, everything we see is revealing. This limited form of communication tells us something important about our alien visitors and their level of technological advancement.”
Bower was hooked on every word. She barely noticed the bumps in the road or the noise from the truck engine.
“They’re capable of communicating broadly and simply, but not in detail. In the same way, we can process whale calls, taking samples and conducting statistical analysis of behavior patterns to construct a certain message that would be easily understood by other whales. We could even construct such an individual message for each species of whale, using their own distinct dialects, but we couldn’t necessarily hold a conversation with a whale. Again, this reinforces the notion that this alien species is hundreds, but not thousands of years ahead of humanity. Whatever means they have of communicating among themselves, it is vastly different from human speech, placing an impediment in their path when communicating with us.
“And for the conspiracy theorists, it is important to note there’s been no attack. There have been no ray guns or super-fast spacecraft racing around, strafing the ground and blowing things up. If we look at the timing of their acts, from entering the solar system, to approaching Earth, to waiting at the Lagrange point, to announcing their presence, to moving into an Earth orbit, we can see there’s a pattern. They’re moving at a slow, deliberate pace. They’re giving us time to accept their presence. They’re not rushing in. This is much the same way we would approach an animal in the wild.”
Bower was fascinated with the scientific press conference. She wasn’t sure who was talking, but this lady knew her stuff. She had to be from one of the space agencies. As her accent was American, Bower assumed she was from NASA.
“We can observe structures on the craft that match Fibonacci sequences. This is something important to note, as it is a clue to what we suppose is the organic nature of the alien vessel.
“For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term, Fibonacci was the first person to note that sizes and shapes in nature are ruled by a simple numeric principle where numbers in a sequence are added to each other to find the next number. Starting with zero and one, one plus one equals two. Two plus one equals three. Three plus two equals five. Five plus three equals eight, eight plus five equals thirteen, and so on, with the pattern always growing by the same proportion as the numbers get larger and larger.
“This pattern is important because it’s natural. We see it everywhere in our world, even if we don’t realize it. Look at the swirl of a sea shell, or the point at which branches stem out of a tree or the veins on a leaf, or the shape of a hurricane as seen from space; these all fan out using numbers found in the Fibonacci sequence. Pineapples, pine cones and sunflower seeds all grow in a pattern described by Fibonacci numbers. Look at the length of your upper arm relative to your forearm, or your thigh relative to your lower leg and you’ll find the same basic ratio described by Fibonacci.