Waste of Space

  “When we first met, you said that was because you didn’t know we were around until recently. That you hadn’t noticed us yet.”

  “That wasn’t quite honest of me. The truth is, many alien civilizations have known about you for much of the past thousand years. In fact, some of them even tried to contact you. But you couldn’t comprehend them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because our civilizations are far too advanced compared to yours. Imagine a colony of ants trying to understand what a rocket ship is.”

  I definitely felt insulted now. “And humans are the ants in this scenario?”

  “Please don’t take offense. We know you are smarter than ants are. But compared to us . . .”

  “We’re as dumb as ants.”

  “Let’s just say that you’re operating on a different plane of understanding from ours. So when attempts to contact you were made, you didn’t have any idea what they were.”

  “Maybe that was the case a few thousand years ago. But we’re smarter now. I mean, I understand you.”

  “Yes, but . . . that has less to do with your species getting smarter than, well . . .” Zan shifted uncomfortably. “I have figured out how to communicate on your level.”

  “You mean you’ve figured out how to talk down to us? Like humans figuring out how to communicate with ants?”

  “Yes.”

  I frowned at this, disturbed by the thought of being so dumb. “Is that why the other civilizations aren’t so concerned about whether or not we wipe ourselves out? Because we’re just like a bunch of ants to them?”

  Zan dodged my question. Instead she said, “You wanted answers, Dashiell. This is part of the reason I have been hesitant to share them with you. If this conversation is disturbing to you, we can stop it.”

  “No!” I said, more sharply than I’d expected. I took a moment to gather my thoughts. “It’s just a lot to get my head around.”

  “I expected as much. And you are better prepared for it than most people would be. Even though Dr. Holtz was excited to reveal my existence, he had some grave concerns about how humanity would handle it.”

  “Not as grave as Garth Grisan,” I said sourly. Garth had killed Dr. Holtz to keep Zan’s existence a secret.

  “Oh, Dr. Holtz had many of the same worries as Garth,” Zan replied. “That’s why he didn’t want to tell the entire earth at once. He felt that the revelation could have a dangerous effect.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” I said. “Not if you came in peace.”

  “Dr. Holtz told me a story once. The tale of a tribe in your Amazon rain forest that didn’t encounter the rest of civilization until relatively recently. They were what you would think of as primitive: only a few hundred people with Stone Age technology. However, since they didn’t know about the rest of the world, they thought they were the pinnacle of human achievement.

  “One day, two Western explorers stumbled into their village. The tribesmen recognized that the explorers had different technology than they did, but they still considered the men far inferior to them. After all, the tribe was far better suited to its habitat than the explorers were, and the explorers needed all sorts of silly clothing and gadgets to survive. The explorers offered to take some of the tribesmen to see their civilization, and the two bravest tribesmen agreed. So they went off down the river. The tribesmen expected that everyone they encountered would be lesser than they were. Within a few hours, they had traveled farther than anyone from the tribe had ever gone before in their history.

  “In a day’s time, they reached a small town, and the tribesmen were startled to see that this town had far more people than they even knew had existed on earth. They were overwhelmed by everything the townspeople had: so much food, so many boats, so much technology. And then they came to a larger town, and a larger town, and a larger town, until, eventually, they arrived at the great city at the mouth of the Amazon, with millions of people and skyscrapers and cars and ships the size of mountains. By this time, the poor tribesmen were catatonic with shock. Because their entire view of the world had been overturned. They had gone from being the most important, advanced people on earth to an insignificant, irrelevant little group. It was a tremendous blow to their mental states—and they never recovered from it. One died within a few weeks, while the other went insane.”

  I thought about that for a while. “That might not happen with us. Humanity has prepared itself for the possibility of alien life. Lots of the world is excited about it.”

  “I have seen what you have imagined alien life to be. The spaceships and creatures of your movies and TV shows. As you know, I have found those ridiculous. But I haven’t quite let you know how ridiculous. The spaceships you envision are merely rudimentary modifications to your airplanes. To travel from planet to planet requires technology you aren’t even close to understanding. It requires spacecraft that would, well . . . blow your minds.”

  “And you can’t even try to explain this to us?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you actually have this technology? You can travel between planets at warp speed and stuff like that?”

  “There are some civilizations that have mastered interplanetary travel. Although, once again, it doesn’t work with warp speed or anything like you have imagined.”

  I noticed that she hadn’t quite answered my question. “Can your civilization do it?”

  “Our technology is not quite as advanced as some civilizations’, but we understand the concepts behind interplanetary travel. However, it would be ludicrous for us to attempt such a thing. We couldn’t possibly travel anywhere else.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my species isn’t terrestrial.”

  I took a moment to process that, failing to hide my surprise. “You live in water?”

  “Yes. Just as most life on your own planet does. In fact, on both our planets, life first evolved in the water. On my planet, it just so happened that the most intelligent life forms stayed there.”

  “So you can’t build spaceships because they would need to hold all the water,” I concluded. “And that’s too great a weight to fly with. Plus, if you got to a planet without water, you wouldn’t be able to get around.”

  “That’s correct. Luckily, we evolved some adaptations to our aquatic environment that gave us other ways to travel across space. For example, we needed to develop another way to communicate besides voice, and that eventually led to our telepathic abilities.”

  I was glad I was sitting down. I was so amazed by all these revelations, my knees had gone wobbly. It had never occurred to me that there might be a hyperintelligent aquatic species on some other planet. “So, are you like some sort of really smart fish?”

  Zan smiled, amused, then said, “Perhaps I should just show you what I look like.”

  “You mean it?” I asked excitedly. “Right now?”

  “I think the time has come,” Zan replied.

  And then she changed.

  One moment, she was a human being. The next, she wasn’t.

  I admit, I had been slightly worried that she would turn out to be some sort of hideous sea creature. A lot of aquatic life on earth is disturbing to look at: anglerfish, hagfish, wolf eels, sea cucumbers. But Zan wasn’t anything like that.

  She was like nothing I had ever imagined.

  In the most basic sense, she was like an enormous jellyfish, but there were major differences. For starters, her skin—or whatever her surface was called—was a gorgeous color that was completely new to me, a kind of luminescent pink, like the color of a sky during a sunset, only better. From within the large bulb that would be the body of a jellyfish, there was a glow that seemed to indicate an immense brain at work inside, while all around the bulb were hundreds of little blue dots. Since these were the same color as Zan’s eyes when she showed herself to me, I figured that they were her eyes now as well, although they obviously weren’t anything like my eyes. A dozen long, tubelike tentacles extended from her
body.

  She wavered in the air in front of me, as though she was bobbing in water that I couldn’t see, her tentacles and body rippling.

  She was definitely alien, absolutely nothing like a human being at all—or any of the humanoid beings that showed up in all our movies. And yet . . .

  “Zan,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”

  Zan’s color shifted to a crimson red. “Thank you,” she said, actually sounding flattered. “Would you like me to stay this way . . . or would it be easier if I returned to human form?”

  “No offense, but human form would be easier.”

  “I understand.” Zan was instantly human again. “How’s this?”

  “Better,” I said, although this was a slight lie. It was now hard not to think of Zan as some sort of enormous gelatinous polyp. “Thanks for showing me your real form.”

  “I’m glad you liked it. I expect you must have many questions.”

  “Yes.” In fact, I had so many, I had almost no idea where to start. “Are you carbon-based? Like life on earth?”

  “I am. And so is most of life in the universe. Although beyond that, our bodies are constructed quite differently.”

  “So those tentacle things. Are those arms?”

  “Yes. Although we can also use them to sense the world in various ways. And we eat through them.”

  “How?”

  “We catch food and then absorb it through special organs. It is far more efficient than your need to shift food from your hands to your mouths in order to consume it.”

  “What do you eat?”

  “Aquatic creatures. I suspect you would find them disgusting. The truth is, we don’t make as big a deal out of eating as you humans do. Cooking is one of the things I find so fascinating about your culture.”

  “If you evolved the ability to communicate telepathically, do you think that’s why I can’t do it?”

  “But you did do it, Dashiell. When you appeared to Riley back on earth.”

  “Yes, but you were kind of helping me then, weren’t you? I could feel you inside my head when it happened.”

  “I was there with you, but you were the one who jumped. I will admit, I was skeptical that you could do it until that moment. I am not anymore. You have the power to do it again.”

  “Then why can’t I?”

  “Well, it’s not easy. Even for me. And I suspect that, to do it with any regularity, you will need to train your mind to work in a very different way than it’s used to.”

  “Is this one of those things that’s going to be way too complicated for an ant like me to understand?”

  “You’re not an ant. But yes, it might be too complicated. There are things that evolve besides our bodies. Ways of thinking evolve too. Ways of understanding the universe. For example, you see a limited part of the color spectrum and hear a limited part of the aural spectrum, but other animals can see colors that you can’t or hear sounds that you can’t.”

  “Like how bees can see infrared and dogs can hear high notes?”

  “Exactly. And those limitations shape your perspective of the world. Well, there are other, more complicated forms of perception too. Like your concept of distance.”

  I cocked my head, trying to understand. “You mean different species can perceive distance differently?”

  “Yes. And what you think of as a massive distance between two planets may not appear the same to a different creature.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “There was a time when people would have said that Einstein’s theory of relativity didn’t make any sense. And a time before that when people thought it was heresy to say that the earth revolved around the sun. Right now, you have barely begun to scratch the surface of what the universe is truly like. Although some human scientists are beginning to theorize that what I am saying about distance might be true. Including at least one scientist on your moon base.”

  “Who?”

  “Dr. Brahmaputra-Marquez. She is really quite brilliant.”

  And yet she still married Dr. Marquez, I thought. “So your planet really isn’t hundreds of light years away?”

  “Well, it still takes hundreds of years for light to travel from one to the other, but that is only one way to perceive distance. Has it ever occurred to you that our conversations take place without any gaps in time even though we are on different planets?”

  I winced, feeling like an idiot. Because it hadn’t occurred to me. When I spoke to people back on earth over the ComLinks, there was always a slight delay in transmission, because it took a few seconds for the sound to cover the distance to the moon. But this had never happened when I talked to Zan, even though we were light years apart. “I guess I figured thought moved faster than light or something.”

  “No. It can simply travel in ways that light can’t.”

  I rubbed my temples. My head was starting to throb. Talking to Zan was always mentally taxing, but the complexity of this conversation was taking an additional toll on me.

  “Are you all right, Dashiell?”

  “Yes. I’m just trying to comprehend everything.”

  “It may take time.”

  “Right,” I agreed, although I was wondering if I would ever understand this, even if I had the rest of my life to do it. “This secret that you have that could save humanity. . . . Is there a chance that, even if you tell me what it is, humanity won’t understand it?”

  “I suppose. Although I have faith in you, Dashiell.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to share it?”

  Zan pursed her lips. “I’m afraid I still haven’t decided.”

  I was about to press her on the issue, but before I could, Violet walked into the room. She froze upon seeing me, surprised.

  “Hey,” I said. “Could you give me a little privacy? I was about to call Riley. . . .”

  “No, you weren’t,” Violet said matter-of-factly. “I know you’re talking to Zan.”

  I sighed. A few weeks before, Violet had caught me talking to Zan, so I’d had to pretend that I had an imaginary friend. “I’m not,” I argued. “Zan doesn’t exist.”

  “Sure she does,” Violet said. “I can see her.” Then, to my surprise, she looked right at Zan and said, “Hi!”

  After which, to my even greater surprise, Zan looked right back at her and said, “Hello, Violet. It’s nice to see you again.”

  Excerpt from The Official NASA Procedures for Contact with Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life © National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, 2029 (Classification Level AAA)

  QUARANTINE

  Once a perimeter has been established, it is paramount that no one inside the perimeter be allowed to leave it for a period of at least forty-eight hours. (Including the IEL.) Any life form coming to earth from another planet will very likely be carrying potentially infectious or dangerous agents—or may be a potentially infectious or dangerous agent itself.I To this end, it is important to establish a quarantine area to prevent any potential spread of such agents into the general populace. As quickly as possible, DEXA will deliver mobile quarantine units (MQUs), which have comfortable living quarters and high-pressure showers. Until the MQUs arrive, those who have made primary contact will need to improvise, using local buildings if feasible.II

  Any non-NASA personnel who may have been engaged in primary contact must be quarantined as well, although they should not be told the true reasons for this. Instead a fabrication should be given, explaining (calmly yet firmly) that this is for their own personal health and safety. (For example, one might insinuate that there is a severe danger of radiation poisoning or exposure to toxic chemicals that must be dealt with immediately). DEXA will also dispatch trained medical personnel as quickly as possible. NO ONE IS TO LEAVE THE QUARANTINE AREA UNTIL CLEARED BY TRAINED DEXA PERSONNEL.

  * * *

  I. Such agents may include (but are not limited to): viruses, bacteria, mutated genes, and allergens.
r />   II. If there are no local buildings anywhere nearby, tents or lean-tos will suffice.

  11

  STRONG ACCUSATIONS

  Lunar day 252

  T minus 21 hours to evacuation

  “You can see Zan?” I asked Violet.

  “Duh,” Violet said. “She’s right here with us.”

  “I know she is,” I said. “But I didn’t know you knew. I, uh . . .” After a day of startling revelations, I was surprised how much this was throwing me. “How long have you known each other?”

  “For a few weeks,” Zan answered. “Once Violet stumbled upon you and me talking to each other, I felt I should present myself to her.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” I asked.

  “It was our little secret,” Zan said.

  I looked to Violet. “You’ve never been able to keep a secret in your life!”

  “Yes, I have,” Violet said. “I keep secrets all the time. I didn’t tell you that I ate your Skittles today.”

  “You ate my Skittles?” I asked.

  Violet flushed red, embarrassed. “Not all of them. And we’re going home soon, so it doesn’t matter.”

  Normally, I would have been upset by this, but there were more pressing issues at the moment. I turned to Zan. “Have you two been talking regularly?”

  “About as often as you and I have been talking,” Zan replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m awesome!” Violet exclaimed.

  “I thought she was an interesting representative of humanity,” Zan replied. “Given that you are closely related, your dispositions are surprisingly different.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “I showed Zan how I can burp the alphabet,” Violet said proudly.

  “Great,” I muttered. “That’s exactly what humanity needs to prove its worth to the universe.”

  “Zan was very impressed,” Violet told me.

  “I’ll bet.” I turned to Zan, expecting her to back me up. Instead she shrugged apologetically.

  “It might not have been a Beethoven symphony,” she said, “But it did require some talent.”