My NaNoWriMo 2015 Days 13 and 14
Carolyn walked down the hall looking for the approprate room. Room 147. 147, she repeated to her self as she walked. Carolyn wondered if that room number was chosen on purpose: Section 47 meeting in room 147. After a short walk down the hall, she found it. The room was dark, larger than she had expected. Rows and rows of chairs with built-in desks surrounded an elevated platform amphitheater style. A large, silver screen was on the front wall, the light of an unseen projector setting it aglow. The room looked like it could easily seat 200 people, however, most the seats were empty. The few seats that were occupied centered about the middle in the first 3 rows. Carolyn found a seat in the third row, not wanting to walk in front of any of the other attendees. Not long after taking her seat, Director Thatcher came out onto the platform.
He started up the slide projector and continued. “Five years ago, we began picking up stray radio signals from outside our solar system. When we first started receiving these signals is hard to determine, since scattered reports have been heard of such things since the radio’s debut almost 25 years ago. Our initial reaction was to dismiss these reports as flukes or the product of imaginative minds listening to static.” He changed the slide to show a black and white photo of a brick building with a large metal radio tower on top.
“Enter operation Intercept. Listening posts like this one were stationed strategically during the war. Intercepted enemy communications were intercepted and recorded. As most of you know from your backgrounds working during the latter half of the war, it wasn’t long before the enemy caught on to our listening and began encrypting their transmissions, providing many of you your wartime assignments.”
“Enemy transmissions weren’t all we intercepted though at these stations, however,” he continued. “Soon after the enemy went dark, stations would report scattered reception of what sounded like spoken word in some strange tongue. At first we thought the enemy was speaking in code, but our best linguists could not find any frame of reference to this language and the native tongue of the other side. On top of that, many of these transmissions contained crowds laughing at what were clearly jokes, music of all styles with instruments unfamiliar to us, and other sounds that seemed quite out of place for a war communique. The original Section 47 was tasked with finding the origin of these transmissions. Determine whether or not it was some sort of ruse from enemy counterintelligence, or if it came from some other country not involved with the war, and not known by our government. This last explanation was highly unlikely, given it was coming over radio, but what Section 47 actually discovered was far more improbable. One might say impossible.
“The signals were shown to originate from a planet orbiting a binary star 4.9 lightyears away. Ladies and gentlemen, Section 47 found conclusive evidence that we are not alone in the universe. Another species of intelligent life lives just five lightyears from our doorstep, and there is no telling what they are capable of, or what their intentions might be if we’re discovered.”
Carolyn was sure she was in some sort of film. Or perhaps this was some kind of joke. How could this possibly be true? And of all the people in the world, why was she being told about it? The director had paused his speech, seemingly well aware that his words needed time to sink in. *We’ve been picking up stray radio signals from an entirely different culture on an alien world?* It seemed so far fetched, and yet… Her mind drifted off to a melody she heard all those years ago, on a rainy day where she was sure her life was destined to be dull and uneventful forever. Could that have been an alien transmission? It couldn’t have been. Yet here she was being told that not only are aliens real, but we’ve been unwittingly listening in on their broadcasts at least since the war. The rest of the room’s occupants seemed stunned as well. No one dared speak, as if telling another soul, even one in this room, would somehow break the vow of secrecy they all pledged. Or perhaps they were afraid if they voiced it aloud, someone would laugh and tell them they were being fooled. Mr. Thatcher didn’t look like he was joking. His face was solemn and serious. Carolyn recognized that look from commanders during the war whenever they had bad news from the front lines to relay. This was not a joke to him, that was for sure.
The man continued. “There is more. During the war our scientists developed a method for transmitting moving pictures as well as sound the same way we transmit radio broadcasts. This technology proved to have little usefulness during wartime, but limited testing amongst consumers in a few municipalities have shown it to have promising commercial application. I’m sure some of you have heard of this idea of television? Well, as I said, this technology transmits similarly to radio, and it is clear now, we are not the first species to have come up with it.”
He skipped ahead on the slide deck. “Here is the home of Dr. Bartholomew Williams. He works with us in our propulsion laboratories. One day, coming home from work early, he found his 5 year old daughter Audrie watching a most peculiar broadcast on the television. As this was an early test market, there were only a few broadcasts in the evening. None during the day. He took a photograph of what his daughter was watching and brought it to his superiors attention. What you are about to see, ladies and gentlemen, is the first captured image of extra terrestrial life, received via our new television receivers.”
Mr. Thatcher clicked the slideshow forward again. There was a collective gasp, air being sucked out of the room as the attendees tried to process what they were seeing. The picture was a somewhat off-angle photograph of a small round screen with lines of black and white specks crossing it like scattered snow. Carolyn could make out short, dark figures dressed in thick cloaks walking down a street with building of thick stone that seemed to blend into the background. The image was blurry, but from what Carolyn could see, the people did not look all that different from her fellow humans. a bit shorter, perhaps, maybe darker. their facial features could not be discerned from the image. Aside from the strange clothes and structures behind them it could have been four stout people walking down her own street. Then she noticed a detail in the sky she had missed. Next to the one sun, clearly setting in the horizon, another sun appeared above it almost as if it were midday. This was not at all like the planet she was on. *Aliens!*
“Section 47 has been tasked with the following objectives,” Mr. Thatcher announced. Leaving that slide up for emphasis. “One: Learn everything we can about this planet and its inhabitants, ascertain the level of threat they may pose, and if viable, make contact at some later date. Two: protect the populous from learning about this discovery, neutralizing any leaks as they come up, until such time as we have a plan for releasing the information and a plan of defense in case they prove hostile. Three: Push the frontier of space flight and exploration along with orbital defense so that we are ready in case they attempt to visit without clear expectations of their intentions. All this must be done in top secrecy both from the Nepolans and our own people. It is unclear if our former enemies are aware of these aliens’s existence, but given they had listening outposts similar to our own there is no reason to believe otherwise. They certainly have had the opportunity. We also know from intelligence that they have been working on their own rocket program. It’s a race to see who can get an object in orbit first. Ladies and Gentlemen, we must win this race.”
“Each of you have been assigned to a task force in each department trying to meet these goals. We will begin a two week long training session to help get you up to par with procedures and leadership responsibilities. We are starting from scratch, ladies and gentlemen, and if we’re picking up television signals from this planet, they are likely at least five years ahead of us technologically speaking. To continue the race metaphor, if we and the Nepolans are starting at the beginning of the race, this other society started before we even arrived at the track. There’s no telling where they are in comparison to us or how much they even know of our existence, if they do at all.”
“Now if you all refer the folders given to you at the beginning.” The lights began to come on as he said this. Someone had turned off the projector. “These dossiers will explain which department you will be assigned, and what your specific tasks will be. These folders, and the knowledge contained within must remain within these walls. From now on, everything you do, anything you know, anything you experience at this job is top secret, and must not be divulged to anyone without sufficient security clearance. Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen, and good luck!”
Carolyn opened her folder, barely able to contain her excitement. She was a regular kid in a candy store right now. She looked over the paperwork. She was assigned to cryptology. Her mission was to help the team come up with a method for encrypting and decrypting radio signals to ‘solve the leaky planet problem’ and also to prevent televisions from picking up stray signals. If all transmissions were encoded, she realized, any transmission picked up without encoding would display as noise when the decoder system attempted to decipher it and play it back. She had no idea how one could do that in real time, and there were plenty of holes in this plan, but she could fix them. She couldn’t wait to get started.
