The Chronicles of Amon book 1 LINK

  Chapter 6.

  After completing the required five-year tour of duty as captain, Zuri was given the option to retire and go back into ‘civilian’ life. For her, the decision was easy. She had always had an analytical mind and intellectual curiosity. ‘Civilian life’ held little interest for her. She chose to remain in service, where she worked as an inter-ship liaison.

  Once again her skills in diplomacy shown. She was stimulated by the interchange between cultures. She gained a reputation within the fleet as being clear-thinking, fair-minded and considerate. Under her leadership the bonds between cultures became more and more solidified. After just a few years of service, she was elected to the highest post in the operations sector: Senior Command Officer. Now at age 35, she was the youngest person ever to hold that position.

  Sleep seemed to evade her. Try as she might, after 6 hours of tossing and turning, she couldn’t keep her eyes closed or her mind from racing. How were they coming on the download? She couldn’t get it out of her head. Finally giving up, she threw the covers off and quickly changed from bedclothes into her uniform. A quick stop in the bathroom, and she was out the door.

  The library was located two decks below the bridge. When Zuri came through the door, she was met by a cacophony of sounds. Groups of people stood shoulder to shoulder, hunched over computer keyboards, chattering excitedly. Others sat stonily in front of screens, absorbed in the data. There, in the center of the room stood Evander, hands clasped once again behind his back.

  “I thought you were gonna get some sack time.” Zuri said as she walked into the room. Evander turned at the sound of her voice.

  “I thought the same for you.”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Too much rattling around inside my head.”

  “Me too. We’ve got a fair amount of the message down-loaded . . . making good progress. Looks like it’s a tutorial mostly. Starts out with binary math symbols; zeros and ones. Establishes magnetism and electricity; on, off, positive, negative. Then it goes into absolute values. You know; up, down, left, right. Not too far into the program it’s dealing with morals and ethics; right, wrong, good, bad. Whoever put this together started from the ground up, really knew what they were doing.”

  “Heard anything from the others?” Zuri grabbed him affectionately by the arm and walked toward one of the workstations.

  “Not a whole lot. We broke the message down into five segments, one for each ship. We took the first one. Looks like the others deal with increasingly complex issues like mathematics, geometry; or symbology like alphabets or musical notation. It gets complicated in a hurry.”

  “Anything from the object?” Zuri nodded.

  “Not a peep. Venure says they can make out a little more of the structural details . . . say it looks sorta like a giant tin can with warts.”

  “Warts!?”

  “Their description. Not mine. Say they’re hemispherical in shape and unevenly distributed over the entire surface, at least the side we can see.”

  “Do we know if it’s hollow?”

  “Can’t say. We’re still too far away.”

  “How long ‘till we get there?”

  “A little over 30 hours.” Evander glanced at the digital readout on the wall to his right. Turning back to the console, he pointed.

  “Looks like we’re into spherical geometry already.”

  Zuri looked perplexed as the symbols flashed by on the screen.

  “Right. Well . . . Let’s get everybody back on line again. Just audio this time, so we can keep working.”

  “I’ll make the call.” Evander keyed his lapel mic. “Com . . . O.W. Ring up the others . . . audio only. Link with the S.C.O. and myself. Call when you’re ready.” “As you . . . (sound of a stylus dropping) as you wish, sir.”

  “Must be someone new on duty tonight.” Zuri kept watching the symbols fly by. “Yup. It’s Rani’s niece, and she’s scared to death.”

  “What’d you do . . . give her the look?”

  “Same one I give all the new-bees. Keeps ’em on their toes.”

  “Well . . . she’ll get used to it.” Zuri smiled up at her friend and mentor.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.” Evander frowned and winked back. “S.C.O., O.W. . . . Com. Link’s established.”

  “OK. Send ’em. Thanks, Mai. Good work.”

  “Thank you, sir. Com out.”

  Zuri smiled as she looked up again at the tall man standing at her side. Evander wore his salt and pepper hair cut short. The gray was a little heavier around his temples.

  For as long as she could remember, his hair had looked the same. So had his face . . . a hint of a few wrinkles around the eyes . . . a slightly furrowed brow. And penetrating dark green eyes. When she looked into them, she felt that she could see his soul. There was wisdom there . . . and sadness.

  Many times she had asked him his age. Always he had evaded her; answering with some cute quip like ‘too old for you, young lady.’ She had always laughed at his response, but still her curiosity remained. Once she had hesitantly looked in his personnel file, feeling guilty for having invaded his privacy. Everything was there, his place of birth, not far from her home town; parents: their names were listed. Citizen ID number; it was there too. Date of birth: unknown/adopted. Maybe that was why he wouldn’t tell her. He didn’t know, himself.

  “Brighid . . . Interloq.” A female voice came over their personal transceivers.

  Asha: “Everyone else here?” Zuri waited as the other captains reported in. Then she started off. “OK then. Here’s what we know at our end. The first part of the message is designed to establish a foundation for communication. It begins as a mathematical sequence in the binary system. It then progresses through to base ten. From there it establishes fundamental laws of math and physics. Eventually it establishes a base for language development and ethics. There’s probably more, but we haven’t gotten through it all yet.

  “Asha here. The second part builds on logic: ‘if-then’ scenarios. From there, language and vocabulary, eventually into literature and philosophy.”

  “This is Imamu. Much of what we have deals with physical science, mostly organic chemistry. A lot of advanced mathematics, too.”

  “Wasswa here. We’re seeing a lot of artwork and music, interspersed with more math. We’re also seeing some feedback loops, maybe used for viewer participation. You know. Learning by doing. That sort of thing.”

  “That’s what we’ve got, too. You might want to go back and look a little closer for those loops. We’re finding them all over the place.”

  “Thanks, Chetan.” Zuri still had her eyes glued to the screen, concentrating. “OK, all. What do you think?”

  “It all looks pretty straight forward to me.” Evander assumed his usual pose, hands clasped behind his back. “It’s long and drawn out, but I suppose it has to be that way for it to work. Maybe the loops are there to separate concepts; sort of like chapters in a text book.”

  “Chetan, again. I have to agree. This would all be impossible to digest in one setting. I think the loops serve just that purpose. I don’t think the whole message is sent at once. I think the loops are break points. They’re there to receive responses. When the right answer is received, they transmit the next sequence. This all makes perfect sense to me. What better way to teach . . . and learn? I’m thinking we don’t need to come up with a message of our own. We can just use the one we have.”

  “Sweet!” They could hear the excitement in Wasswa’s voice. “But I don’t know why we didn’t pick up on the feedback loops right from the beginning.”

  “Probably a difference between our program and the message’s. It’s centuries old, after all.” Evander stepped back from the console and looked toward Zuri.

  “Right! OK.” She too stepped back, hands on hips. “Let’s get the programmers on this and get all the loops activated. When we’re ready, we can get it set up for transmission. Are we in agreement?” (yes’s all a
round.) “All right! Great! Let’s get on it! And be sure to get some rest. I think we’re gonna need it.”

  An hour later Zuri fell into bed and was asleep almost immediately.

  Several hours later:

  The fleet had begun deceleration an hour before. All five ships were now at station-keeping 10 miles distant from the huge cylinder. (There really was no such thing as ‘stopping’ in space, since the universe was in a continuous state of motion. Station keeping simply meant maintaining a constant distance between objects.)

  Of course, word had quickly spread throughout all the ships. Every citizen excitedly awaited the time when the ‘message’ would be transmitted. Truth be known; most everyone was fearful. No one knew what to expect.

  Prefect leaders and council members brought out old protocol documents that had been stored away for generations. Public forums were quickly organized. Briefings were held. Schools were let out. Public service workers, commerce workers, private citizens, virtually everyone broke from their daily routines and congregated in public places throughout each ship.

  Contact with a new race was something everyone hoped for. But few really expected it to happen in their lifetime. In the nearly one thousand years the mission had been in existence, contact had only happened four times. This was monumental; more than just a once-in-a-lifetime event. Excitement seemed to permeate everything.

  Up on the bridge the tension was almost tangible. The Brighid crew, including off-duty people, crowded around workstations. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. At her command station, Zuri conferred with the ships’ captains.

  “Com. What’s your status?”

  “Message is queued and ready for transmission on broad band, mam.”

  “Very well. Bring up inter-ship PA, please.” A quiet hiss was heard throughout all the ships. Vid screens blinked and came to life. Pushing out from her desk, Zuri stood up, placing a hand on her chair back. She looked out across the Ops Deck area. All conversation ceased. All eyes turned toward her. There at the com console, Evander stood; one hand resting on the console, the other resting gently on the new-bee’s shoulder. He was looking up at Zuri, smiling.

  “Citi . . .” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “Citizens. Never before in recorded history has an event such as this taken place.”

  Throughout all the ships, people hung on her every word. Anticipation was palpable. Children stood motionless, eyes wide with anticipation. Parents held each other. Strangers stood close together. Many held hands. All eyes focused on the vid screens posted throughout the ships.

  “Not since we left our home worlds, not since our races united has an event comparable to this occurred. We don’t know what to expect. It may be good. It may be ill. It may be for naught.” Zuri paused, took a deep breath. “Eternal optimism has brought us this far. We cannot but believe that it will continue. For a thousand years we have stood united. May it ever be so.”

  Looking down to the Com console, “Mai, please transmit now.” The young trainee smiled nervously, then turned toward her console and pressed the button.