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Transmission
“We think the planets are all tidally locked,” one said. “Is there evidence of day shifting into night? If not, one side of the planets should be burning, while the other freezes.”
Kevin couldn’t tell him at first, until another message explained that yes, the planets spun, in ways that seemed to excite the scientists even more.
“We’ll have to rewrite what we know about all of this. What about the radiation exposure from being so close to the star?”
Again and again, they asked questions Kevin didn’t know the answers to. They didn’t seem to get that he didn’t have any control over what the aliens had sent in their bursts of messages. They sent what they sent, Kevin translated it, and the scientists had to scramble to try to make some kind of sense of it.
Strangely, Dr. Levin was the one person who didn’t seem to mind that.
“It’s just astonishing that they’ve chosen to communicate in this way,” she said. “They’re sending so much information about themselves, trying to preserve some understanding of who they are.”
“Who they were,” Kevin corrected her. That was one thing that the messages had been clear about. The people sending them were long gone. That was both incredibly sad and also kind of cool, knowing that he was pretty much the last link to a dead civilization.
One strange thing was how simple and factual it all was. Kevin had been kind of expecting to learn more about the culture or the languages of the beings that inhabited the planet, yet he still hadn’t seen enough of them to understand what they really were. Which of the creatures on the planet’s surface were they? Were they the chitin-shelled creatures that crawled there, or the long-necked things like scaled giraffes? Kevin’s imagination kept him expecting something humanlike and familiar, but so far he hadn’t heard any reference to it.
Kevin just wished that he could share more of those words with the world. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he sought out Dr. Levin, because he suspected she would be his biggest ally. He found her in the canteen with Phil.
“I’m worried that I’m saying all of this, and it’s just going to be locked away in secret somewhere,” he said.
“Professor Brewster is just being careful,” Dr. Levin said. To Kevin, she sounded as though she was trying to convince herself.
“What if he’s so careful no one ever learns about the aliens?” Kevin asked. It was a real worry. He could imagine the tall scientist doing it all too easily. “What if my mother only agrees because she doesn’t want people laughing at me?”
“I’m sure that won’t happen,” Dr. Levin said. Again, she didn’t sound sure.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Kevin asked. He wasn’t sure if Dr. Levin would answer that or not.
“David… Professor Brewster… has to answer to people inside the government,” Dr. Levin said. “Some of his funding is from the military. Something like this… they might want to keep it secret.”
Kevin could tell she wasn’t happy about that. “So he might never tell people?”
“They’d probably be worried about people panicking,” Dr. Levin said. Again, Kevin got the feeling that she didn’t agree.
“You must want to tell people,” Kevin said. “Your whole organization wants to find aliens.”
Dr. Levin smiled tightly. “I can’t,” she said. “If I do, it will make things harder for SETI. Professor Brewster wouldn’t let it go, and some of his bosses… well, they’d see it as a betrayal.”
“Even though people have a right to know?” Kevin said.
“They’d say that people only have a right to know what they’re told,” Dr. Levin said.
Kevin shook his head. “This isn’t right. Professor Brewster shouldn’t do this.”
“I’ll try talking to him. In the meantime, Phil, why don’t you take Kevin for a walk around the facility? I’m sure it must be pretty boring spending all your time either here or in your room.”
It was, in ways that made even school seem interesting by comparison. Kevin might never have been one of those kids who went to a different activity every night, and camp in the summer, but he’d never spent his time in one room either, doing nothing but acting as a kind of human satellite dish for alien messages.
He’d been around the facility before, but it was good to spend some time being something other than the kid who heard the messages. Phil led the way, using his security access. Despite effectively living there now, Kevin didn’t have any. Apparently, they could trust him enough to receive alien signals, but not to be able to come and go as he wanted.
“We’re working on producing plants that can survive in extreme environments,” Phil said, pointing to a room full of what appeared to be tomato plants. “Maybe if all of this leads to humanity meeting aliens, we’ll be able to offer them a nice plant to take home.”
Kevin smiled at that thought. “The aliens are dead, remember? They said that their planet was destroyed.”
“But someone must have sent that signal,” Phil said. “So they must have survived to do it.”
“I guess,” Kevin said, but even so, he wasn’t hopeful. What if they’d just survived long enough to send out their messages? What if they’d lived out lives of a few more years, only to die on some far-off world? The contact with the aliens felt almost as doomed in the long run as everything else about his life.
“And this elevator leads down to the bunker,” Phil said, gesturing to a set of doors.
“A bunker?” Kevin said. “Like, a nuclear bunker?”
“Nuclear, chemical, biological,” Phil said. “The idea is to have one close by in the event that there ever is some kind of war, or attack, or something. There are bunkers all over the place, and they give some senior people keys to save the ‘best and the brightest’ if it looks as though the world will end.”
He didn’t sound particularly happy about the idea. Maybe he suspected that he wouldn’t be on the list.
“So these bunkers are everywhere?” Kevin said.
Phil nodded, then took out his phone. “There’s a whole map of them,” he said. “Although Professor Brewster doesn’t know I have this.”
He showed Kevin the map, covered in small red dots. There was one right under them, and another tucked away to the east in the state park under Mount Diablo.
“That seems like a strange place for a bunker,” Kevin said.
“It’s because it’s away from the city,” Phil replied. “It means it’s more likely to survive an attack. Besides, no one talks about it, but they used to do military testing up there.”
It sounded like the kind of secret Kevin wasn’t supposed to know, but then, he suspected that aliens were the kind of secret he wasn’t supposed to know right then.
“I guess I wouldn’t make it into one of the bunkers anyway,” Kevin said. He couldn’t help a note of resentment there.
“Still angry that the professor decided to keep you a secret here?” Phil asked.
Kevin was about to say no, say the thing he was supposed to say, but the truth was that he was angry.
“He can’t just do that,” Kevin said. “The aliens are sending a message to the whole world. Shouldn’t everyone get to hear it?”
Phil shrugged. “The trouble is, he can. Especially if his bosses want to keep anything you do for military applications. This is a facility that engages in confidential research, and it has plenty of security. Keeping people out is easy. Keeping secrets in, though…”
“What do you mean?” Kevin asked.
The researcher gestured for him to follow, and he led the way to a broad window near the front entrance to the building, looking out over the research facility’s front lot. Out beyond the fence, where the public part of the NASA facility stood, Kevin could see a large crowd of people all looking toward the building. Several of them had cameras.
“Who are they?” Kevin asked.
“Someone must have let it slip that we were working on something to do with aliens,” Phil said, in a tone that suggested exactly who that someone might be. “Probably a scientist who decided that you shouldn’t keep things like this quiet.”
“Or you,” Kevin suggested, because he’d never really understood it when adults tried to say things without actually saying them, like that.
“It could have been your mother,” Phil pointed out, “and Dr. Levin would love to be able to tell the public about extraterrestrial life being real. I mean, it’s literally her job. Or—”
“But it wasn’t them,” Kevin said. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Shh,” Phil said. “Do you want to cost me my job? Now, it occurs to me that, if you were to go out there and talk to those people, old Brewster wouldn’t be able to keep you locked away. I’m just talking hypothetically, you understand.”
Kevin looked over at the doors. They were solid things, with a card lock for which he didn’t have a card. They seemed like an impossible barrier. Even the glass beside them was toughened.
“I can’t get outside,” he said.
“Why would you need to get outside?” Phil replied, with an expression of badly feigned shock. “I’m just talking hypothetically. I hope you understand that if I did anything to help you, Kevin, I could get into a lot of trouble.”
“I… think I understand,” Kevin said, with a slight frown, because he wasn’t quite sure that he did. Seriously, why didn’t people say what they meant?
“Oh,” Phil said, “I just remembered, I was supposed to help fix a security problem with the cameras in front of the doors.”
“What security problem?” Kevin asked with a frown.
“The one that’s going to happen in about two minutes. Someone is going to decide it would be a good idea to let one of the experimental AIs play chess with them. Incidentally, could you do me a favor, Kevin?”
Kevin looked over at him. “What do you need?”
Phil took out what looked very much like a keycard. “Professor Brewster dropped this. Would you mind returning it to him when you see him? I’m sure he’ll be along to demand answers from you at some point.”
Kevin took it. “I will,” he said. “And Phil… thank you.”
“For what?” the researcher asked. “I didn’t do anything. Actually, it’s quite important to remember that part.”
“I will,” Kevin promised.
As Phil walked away, Kevin forced himself to wait, counting the seconds under his breath. He saw the lights on the cameras by the door go dim, and quickly swiped the card in the door.
He walked out from the building, feeling strange being out in the open air for the first time in days. The air in the facility was so pristine, so carefully filtered, that it felt almost stale next to this. It felt strange to be walking like this too, when he’d spent so much time sitting or lying down, doing nothing but relaying the contents of that golden thread of information. He kept walking, then ran, as he heard a shout behind him. He glanced back to see a security guard there, looking unsure what to do next and speaking into a radio.
Kevin kept going for the fence, not sure how much more time he would have.
Professor Brewster was somewhere behind him now, yelling for him to come back. Kevin smiled at that. It would only make it more likely that people would believe what he was going to do next. It might mean that people listened.
He ran up to the fence and stopped, looking at the people there, looking at the cameras. Some were from local news stations. At least a couple seemed to be from national ones. Faced with that, Kevin swallowed nervously. He didn’t know what to say.
“Um… hi, I’m Kevin. You’ve probably heard some of the rumors about what’s been going on here? Well, they’re true.”
CHAPTER NINE
Kevin sat in Professor Brewster’s office, getting the feeling that the scientist would love to shout at him, if only he had enough time. He certainly looked angry enough to do it. Frankly, right then, he looked just about angry enough to explode. He didn’t have enough time, though, because he was too busy answering phone calls, trying to talk to Kevin and Dr. Levin in between.
“Yes sir. Yes, I’m sure it is. Yes, it’s true that the boy seems to be… yes, yes, of course. But sir, it’s our project and… yes sir, of course I’m aware of the implications.” He put the phone down. “That was the director of NASA. Can you understand how difficult this is, Kevin? How complicated this is about to—”
He picked up the phone again as it rang.
“Hello? Who? No, I’m sorry. No. No, I don’t accept that the boy should be taken into FBI custody for his own safety.”
He put the phone down.
“This is only the start of it,” he said. He looked over to Kevin. “Do you understand, Kevin, that part of the reason I wanted to keep this a secret was because I knew how some people would react? News of alien life is a big thing for this country, for the world. I wanted to protect you from all the different people who would want to try to control part of that.”
Kevin stared at the older man. He hadn’t thought that Professor Brewster was interested in much beyond the success of his institute. It was strange to think that he might have been trying to look out for him. Adults, he decided, were far too complicated.
The phone rang again.
“The CIA? But we’re on American… Yes, I accept that space is beyond American borders, but…”
While they were busy arguing about it, Dr. Levin put a hand on his shoulder.
“How about we take you back to your room, Kevin?” she suggested. “I’m sure they’ll be arguing for a while yet.”
Kevin nodded, and they slipped off. He wasn’t sure if Professor Brewster noticed, he was that busy fielding calls. Briefly, he wondered what would happen if he just walked out of the facility again and kept walking, not coming back. Would the scientist do anything to stop him? Would he be able to?
A glance out the window suggested that wouldn’t be easy. Already, the crowd of reporters had swollen until it seemed like a horde of them wanting to get in, the security on site barely enough to keep them back. That security looked as though it was about to be reinforced, though, because military vehicles were rolling up, spreading out around the perimeter of the facility, with armed men jumping out.
“All this because I talked about aliens on TV?” Kevin said. It seemed like a lot, given the number of people who did that.
“All this because we proved aliens to them,” Dr. Levin corrected him, and Kevin guessed that far fewer people had done that. “There will be a lot more.”
“How many more?” Kevin asked. He wasn’t sure he was comfortable with the idea of being surrounded just because he’d said something.
“Follow me.” She led the way over to one of the recreation rooms. The TV there was on, scientists staring at one of the news channels.
“The boy, identified as Kevin McKenzie of Walnut Creek, California, claimed to be in contact with an extraterrestrial source of information, and gave extensive details about the Trappist 1 planetary system, believed by many experts to be—”
Dr. Levin flipped the channel, and now there was an interview there with a wild-eyed man in a grubby T-shirt for a band Kevin didn’t know.
“It’s all a lie,” he said. “It’s a distraction. The government wants us looking at this, so that we’re not looking at the truth! It’s an excuse, so that when they start drugging the drinking water, it will all seem normal!”
Dr. Levin flipped the channel again. Now, there was a pastor on the screen talking in front of a large congregation.
“It’s clear that what the boy is actually hearing is the voice of God, preparing us for the Rapture! We must be—”
She turned the TV off, ignoring the protests of the scientists as she did so.
“That’s enough,” she said. “You all have work to do, and it will be complicated enough now without listening to all that trash. You know the truth. You’ve seen it. Get back to work.”
To Kevin’s surprise, they did, even though Dr. Levin wasn’t their boss. Maybe they were just looking for someone to tell them what to do. He knew he was, right then. He might understand the aliens’ messages, but he wasn’t sure that he really got what half of this might mean.
“Things are going to get tricky,” Dr. Levin said to him. “There will be people now trying to twist what you say, and use it for their own ends.”
“So what do I do?” Kevin asked.
She shrugged. “Just keep saying things exactly as you see them. You’re at the heart of something big, but you need to tell the truth, do your best with it. It’s all any of us can hope to do right now.”
Kevin nodded, but he doubted that it would be that easy. At least one reason it wouldn’t be easy was his mom, and she was standing across the recreation room from him now. He found that he was afraid. What would she say? He knew she’d been almost as eager to keep the secret of all of this as Professor Brewster, and yet he’d told people everything.
She rushed forward to hug him. “Kevin, are you all right? I thought they’d bring you back to your room, and then I went to Professor Brewster’s office and he was on the phone to the Pope, and…”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Kevin assured her. Right then, he would have said it even if he weren’t, just to take away some of the look of worry on her face.
“There are so many people out there now,” she said. “Kevin, we were just trying to keep you safe.”
Kevin shook his head. It was important that people knew about what was happening. It didn’t matter if he was safe. “I had to tell them.”
“And now I think they’re going to go crazy out there if somebody doesn’t tell them more,” his mother said.
Dr. Levin cocked her head to one side, then looked out at the crowds beyond the building. “Your mother has a point, Kevin. Someone needs to explain all this to people.”
“What did you have in mind?” Kevin asked.
“I think we need to organize a press conference.”
***
“We need to be very careful about this,” Professor Brewster said, as he, Kevin, and Dr. Levin stepped into one of the institute’s conference rooms together. “I’m only agreeing to this because the alternative is letting people make up what they want in place of the truth.”
Kevin guessed that he didn’t like the idea of people trying to force their way into his research center to learn the truth, either.
“So we tell them the truth,” Kevin said.
To his surprise, he saw Professor Brewster shake his head. “Ideally, Kevin, I think it’s best if you say as little as possible. We need to manage people’s expectations of all this and what it might mean for them.”
“But there are aliens,” Kevin said.
“And that will scare a lot of people,” Professor Brewster explained. “We need to be careful. Trust me, I’ve been involved in announcing a lot of scientific discoveries. It’s important to get the message right with these things so that people can understand the potential implications of it all.”
He led the way out to a small platform, where some of the researchers had set up a small table. Kevin sat in the middle, with the two adults flanking him. Out in front of him was what seemed to be a sea of people, many of them with cameras. They started to shout questions almost as soon as Kevin and the others sat down.
“Professor Brewster, have you really found evidence of alien life?”
“Can we expect to be visited by aliens in the near future?”
“Is this all some kind of joke?”
“Who is the boy?”
Kevin did his best to just sit there, while Professor Brewster leaned forward and started to answer, looking officious.
“Well, those are all very complex questions,” the institute’s director began, and Kevin could see how this was going to go.
Apparently, so could Dr. Levin. “Yes,” she said. “There are aliens. No, this is not a joke, and most of you have already met Kevin. From what I’ve seen of the news, half of you have already started to trawl through his life. There’s really no point. We’re not trying to hide anything. To prove that, we’re going to hold regular press conferences here, explaining what we find out.”
Professor Brewster looked as though he’d swallowed something unpleasant, but the questions were already coming in again.
“But does the boy, does Kevin, really have communications with an alien civilization?” a reporter called out. “He’s talking to them?”
When Dr. Levin looked over to him, Kevin stood up, trying not to look as nervous as he felt right then.
“I’m not talking to aliens,” he said. “I’ve had… some visions, I guess… and I can translate their signal when I hear it. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” a reporter said, with a laugh “It sounds like plenty. Will we get to hear these signals?”
“I’m not sure anyone would understand them,” Kevin said. Although what if someone did? What if there was someone else out there like him? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Kevin didn’t know right then.
“But we have you to translate, don’t we?” another reporter called out. “Doesn’t the public have a right to hear these messages?”
“They do,” Dr. Levin said, and again, Kevin had the impression of her speaking up before Professor Brewster could say anything. “Which is why we’ll be holding regular press conferences from now on, where Kevin will try to decipher the signals we’ve recorded from that region.”
Professor Brewster stood up. He had a smile fixed in place that looked as though it might crack at any moment. “Okay, folks. I think we shouldn’t tire out Kevin too much. That’s enough for one day.”
***
This time, Professor Brewster had more than enough time to shout.
“You ambushed me, Elise!” Professor Brewster said. “Regular press conferences?”
“Come on, David,” Dr. Levin said. “You know it’s the right thing to do, and this way you get to keep everything orderly, rather than having people trying to break in to get information. You’re a scientist. You don’t believe in hiding things away.”
“I also don’t believe in getting our funding cut because someone in Congress thinks I’m giving away something we should hold onto,” Professor Brewster said, and Kevin could hear some of the worry under the anger.
Kevin wondered what it must be like to have Professor Brewster’s job. Presumably, he’d wanted to be a scientist when he was Kevin’s age, had wanted to discover things. Now, it seemed as though he mostly spent his time organizing things and worrying about money. It sounded like the kind of thing someone had to do if they were a manager or something, not a scientist. It wasn’t something Kevin would have wanted to have to do.
“We’ve announced them now,” Dr. Levin said.
“You’ve announced them,” Professor Brewster said. “We can still—”
He found himself interrupted by a call, and something about his expression as he answered said that this was different from the calls he’d received so far about this.
“Hello? Yes, this is he… I’m sorry, did I hear you correctly?… Yes, at once.” He looked ashen as he put the phone down. “We need to go to the lobby, now.”
“Why?” Kevin asked.
“Because they’re saying that the President is here.”
Kevin might have asked if he was joking, but one look at Professor Brewster’s face made it obvious he wasn’t. Kevin’s heart tightened in his chest at the thought. The President was coming here, to see him? Somehow, even the presence of the aliens seemed more possible than that. Kevin suddenly found himself wondering if he’d just done the right thing, nerves rising up through him. It didn’t seem right somehow that he was meeting the President.
He followed Professor Brewster and Dr. Levin to the research institute’s lobby, having to hurry to keep up. It was obvious that they didn’t want to keep the President waiting. As they got closer, Kevin glanced out of the building’s windows, seeing a long motorcade there, full of vehicles with blacked out windows.
By the time they reached the lobby, the President was already in the building, and he wasn’t the only one. Secret Service agents in dark suits spread out as if expecting a threat at any moment. Advisors and assistants trailed him in a huddle, some of them looking a little surprised that they were there. Kevin saw other people too, with badges proclaiming them to be from the military, the NSA, the FBI, and more. It seemed that no one had wanted to miss out on being a part of this.
The President walked over as they arrived, taking Professor Brewster’s hand, then turning his attention to Kevin. Kevin swallowed nervously as the older man stared at him.
“So this is the boy?” the President said, looking Kevin up and down as if expecting far more.
“Yes, sir,” Professor Brewster said, sounding positively deferential. “This is Kevin.”
“Kevin? All right, Kevin, do you know who I am?”
“You’re the President,” Kevin said. Inside, a small voice was repeating the words you’re talking to the President over and over. He did his best to ignore it, because if he listened too much, he suspected that he might not be able to say anything.
“Good lad. Now, tell me honestly, can you really talk to aliens?”
“No sir,” Kevin said.
“Ha, I knew it!” the President said. “I told them in the emergency contingencies committee that—”
“I can’t talk to them, but I do receive messages from them,” Kevin went on. “They send information about themselves and their planet, and I can translate it.”
The President’s expression changed, as if he didn’t quite know what to say to that. Kevin was getting used to that expression from people by now.
“Well then,” the President said, wagging a finger. “Just you remember that this information was given to us, in America. It was obviously intended for us as the most advanced nation on Earth.”
“Sir,” Professor Brewster said, “the signal hits the whole world. Kevin is just the one who is able to translate it. You should also be aware that we’ve agreed to press conferences so that we can’t be accused of hiding the information.”
Kevin was surprised to find the man sticking up for sharing the information like that. Sticking up for him like that. An advisor came up to the President and whispered something in his ear.
“Well,” the President said, “maybe that’s a good thing. Other countries will see us sharing it and know that they wouldn’t have gotten it without us.”
“Yes, sir,” Professor Brewster said.
“But now, I’d like to see a demonstration. Kevin, can you show me what you can do?”
Kevin looked to the others, who nodded. “We can only do it if there’s a signal,” he said.
But even as he said it, he could feel the pressure in his skull that preceded one. An alarm sounded and they hurried in the direction of the room where he did the translating, sitting and waiting. Kevin sat there, while outside the President and his advisors stood around, looking as though they didn’t know what was happening.
Words filtered into his mind, the translation happening automatically.
Our world was destroyed. The words sounded flat, without emotion. We had to flee. So few survived.
Kevin repeated the words, and he could see the President’s expression changing, first to surprise, and then to something like wonder.
We hid everything we were, the voice said, and Kevin repeated it, as much of ourselves as we could before the fire came. Messages were sent out, so that people would know of us. We sent capsules in every direction, toward all of the inhabited worlds.
Kevin tried to imagine it, spaceships sent in every direction, trying to find safety. How much effort would it have taken to organize that? How would they have been able to organize it with a disaster threatening them?
Each vessel holds a record of our history, the voice continued.
Coordinates will be sent along this path, the voice said, but the vessel’s seal will be tight to preserve us. You must find it. You must prepare to receive us…
Kevin gasped with the effort of translating, the world around him coming into focus again as he stopped. He could see the President staring at him now, then looking over to Professor Brewster.
“What does all this mean?” he asked. “What are you telling me?”
Kevin could answer that one.
“I think…” Kevin said. “I think the aliens are coming here.”
The President stared at him. So did the others. Then the chaos started, with a dozen people trying to talk at once. The President spoke over them.
“That’s enough,” he said, gesturing for them to quiet down. “I know all of your concerns. Professor Brewster, there are those on my team who feel that Kevin here isn’t safe in your facility; that he is vulnerable to being snatched or attacked by our enemies. They want to move him to a secure site.”
“You mean you want to hide me away in some kind of bunker,” Kevin said. He shook his head. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Sometimes it isn’t about what we want, son,” the President said. “It’s about what’s good for the country.”
“With respect, Mr. President,” Professor Brewster said. “Kevin’s wishes on the matter should count for something. He has not committed a crime, so it would be wrong, even illegal, to lock him up. This is a secure facility, and if the others here want to contribute to that security, that would be very helpful. But they should do that here, where there is the technological knowhow to study what is happening.”
Kevin was surprised to find Professor Brewster standing up for him like that, even if he knew that it was partly because he didn’t want to risk losing the chance to be a part of all this. It seemed that the President was a little surprised to hear it too.
“That’s a very… forceful point, Professor,” he said. “Very well, the boy will stay here. We will provide your facility with whatever it needs, but you will coordinate with my office. I need you to understand the seriousness of this.”
“Yes sir,” Professor Brewster said. “Thank you, Mr. President.”
Kevin wasn’t entirely sure what the professor had just agreed to. It sounded as though he’d just given away a lot of the control of the project.
“I need you to understand the seriousness of this too, Kevin,” the President said. “I thought before I came here that this was nonsense, and now I’m not so sure.”
“It’s true,” Kevin insisted.
“The truth is that it doesn’t matter,” the President said. “Not now. We have reports of Russia and China mobilizing their militaries, conducting ‘exercises’ in case of some kind of attack. There have been riots in the Philippines, because people think this means the end of the world. We need to be very careful about all this, Kevin. I’m going to allow things to continue for now, but there will be people here to watch what’s happening.”
That didn’t matter to Kevin. What mattered was that they kept going. The aliens were sending something to Earth, and whatever it was, Kevin was determined to find it.
