Some random pictures

Insanely creepy story

So creepy story time. This is completely true. Happened to me last night.

So a group of friends and I were playing night games last night in lower Ross park. We were playing a game called Rambo. In Rambo, you are issued a glow stick to serve as a knife, and the goal is to be the last man standing by eliminating all the other players. Our group was seven, but three were sitting out this particular round, and so we became four.

I took an early departure into hiding in an attempt to gain an advantage while the others talked. Making my way uphill from our starting point around a large boulder, I stopped beneath a young tree on the edge of a small clearing. Figuring this the perfect spot for an ambush, I waited, crouched.

After only a few minutes, I saw a figure emerge into the clearing on my right. Staying within the shadows of the trees across from me, the figure moved completely silently up the hill. The clothing seemed to match what my friend Madison was wearing, so I assumed it was her. She was being incredibly quiet, a skill she had not shown a knack for earlier in the game. I smiled to myself, knowing that I had the advantage.

Madison slowly and silently made her way to the north end of the clearing. Skirting around the edge  would have taken too much time, so I decided to crawl to the very edge of the trees to prepare to dash across the moonlit clearing to find a better position to hunt her from. I watched her as I moved. Laying prone, I began to army crawl into position. I'm not one to brag, but I can be exceptionally quiet when I want. I made no sounds loud enough for my own ears to hear, and yet, as I settled into position to wait for Madison to disappear into the trees, she stopped and turned. She was standing directly in front of me, maybe fifteen yards away, mostly within the shadow of a tree, looking right at me. I froze, but I knew she had seen me. I now had to make a decision. I could jump up and charge her, but I didn't know where the other two players were, and they could have been close enough to make revealing my location a bad idea. I decided to stand and slowly cross the clearing south of Madison and stalk up to where she was standing. As I stood, she faded back into the trees, but I wasn't too concerned. I was confident I would be able to locate and approach her without her knowing exactly where I was.

 I creeped across the clearing, keeping an ear open on my left for Madison and on my right for either of the other players. I could hear Madison on my left in the trees. She was making almost no noise, but I could hear her. I reached the trees and stopped to listen. I gave it a few minutes to be sure I had zeroed in on Madison's location, and began to move towards her. I moved using rocks, stepping from one to another to prevent movement noise in the grass. I slowly stalked to within ten feet of where I had heard her last and stopped, crouched on top of a rock. I had the fairly well-lit clearing on my left, but other than the moonlight trickling in through the trees, I was peering into complete darkness. The trees were much thicker in front of me, creating a wall of inky blackness. I stayed here for another few minutes, waiting. I knew I was only a few feet away from her, and if I waited long enough, Madison would make noise and I could pounce.

I was sitting on this rock, scanning the darkness, when I saw her. She was crouched in absolute shadow, no more than ten feet in front of me, staring right at me. We sat, the two of us, waiting for the other to make the first move. She was being completely, deathly still. She never shifted. She never twitched. I could hear no sound coming from her, no breath or pop of joint or even gurgle of guts. I could hear another player moving forty yards behind me, I could hear leaves blowing across the ground some distance away, I could even hear traffic over the hill on what would become Fourth Street, but I didn't hear a sound from her.

A few minutes passed, and the non-players grew impatient. In an effort to shorten the length of time this game was taking, they called out new boundaries from below. My friend Zak, one of the other players, called out his approval from far to my right, and the third player added hers from somewhere below me. I looked at Madison and grinned, knowing we would remain silent and continue our standoff.

Then, things got scary. Madison, from somewhere below me near the non-players, complained about hurting her foot. My blood ran cold as I looked at the figure in front of me. I thought I may have misheard, so I yelled "Where is Madison?"

"She's down here with us."

Ice cold fear gripping me, I bolted out of the trees and down the hill. We didn't see the stranger for the rest of the night, but I couldn't help but glance occasionally into the dark treeline, wondering if the mysterious figure was crouched there, watching me. 

Flight Lessons!

Hey everyone!

FYI, I have officially begun flight training at the Pocatello Regional Airport. I generally will have lessons three times/week, which will include time in the air. I'll be posting some pictures and other cool stuff as I go. 

The Alternate

A young woman in urban America awoke with a start. She lay passively in her bed, feeling the starburst of adrenaline fade slowly into her sheets. The falling dream again. It was always the falling dream.

Experienced at least twice a week since she could remember, the dream was simple but terrifying, and always the same: she’d be dreaming, or nearly dreaming, in a state where she could no longer trust her ability to gauge reality, and would suddenly lose her feet and plummet into an unseen abyss.There was never any pain (at least, none that she could remember), and upon her immediate awakening the fear would be forgotten, but the exhilaration of the perceived brush with death would remain etched into her psyche like the footprints of a winter traveler, melting away only upon the morning sun’s rise.
She extracted herself from the damp and tangled sheets and made her way to the bathroom, where she attempted to wash away her unease in her grimy tub of a sink. The flickering florescent bulb above her bleached her already pale face, giving her the impression she was staring in the eyes of a ghost.
She shivered. This night was different. Her unsettling sense of dread was not only failing to slip into the easily-forgotten past, it was opening the door for a more concrete sense of fear and panic. Unsure of why she should be so distressed, she chided herself for her weakness and moved back into the dark bedroom.
The moment she crossed the threshold of the room, she froze. Something was wrong. Not obviously, glaringly wrong, just....wrong. She looked around her for signs of danger. Her tiny bedroom yielded no shadowy corners or hiding places for would-be threats. Her window was open, her curtains billowing softly in the dim polluted air. She could hear the sounds of a restless city below, rising to meet her, curling around the deteriorating fire escape and spilling through her window to fill her night with its comforting cacophony.
Her eyes were drawn to the window, her ears to the sound. It was here that her unseen fear was tucked away, cloaked in the seemingly normal features she had lived with and come to love during her tenure in this dirty metropolis. She slowly, haltingly approached the window, expecting a darkness to come bounding through and put a face or figure to her fear. Seeing no movement but the gentle sway of the curtains, she reached the window and looked tentatively outside. The fire escape, gaunt and crooked in its age, curved dutifully to the street several stories below her, where the usual thin crowds of night-fairing pedestrians and vehicles navigated to their various destinations. The dancing curls of steam rising from the sewers swept along the streets, rising and twisting and eventually fading with their height.
The picture playing outside her window seemed normal on the surface, but her gut knew something was different. The sound seemed depressed, melancholy. The people walked slowly, without purpose. There were no blaring horns, no shouts, no sirens. There were no distant sounds of bass, pumping through the city like a heartbeat as their vehicle carriers flowed through the veins of the streets. The only sounds were the engines, the footsteps, and the buzz of neon lights.
She stood and watched for a moment more, deciding that the suppressed nature of what she was seeing was nothing more than a fluke, and chalked it up to her fear and restlessness. She turned, intending to return to her bed and try again to sleep. She got no more than a foot closer when she froze in absolute, abject terror.
Someone was in her bed.
The mess of sheets and blanket could not hide the figure curled up on the far side of her mattress, back turned. The dark hair flowing over her pillow hinted that the intruder was female. Eyes moving slowly over the form of the sleeping stranger, she took in the loose tank top, the pink panties, the short socks protruding from the foot of the bed. Tentatively, she looked down at herself. The clothing of the stranger matched her own perfectly, exactly, with the exception of the socks, which were crumpled around the balls of the stranger’s feet, which is how her own had been until she had pulled them on fully upon waking.
Her fear coagulating into a ball of sick in the pit of her stomach, she forced herself to walk around the foot of the bed until the stranger’s face came into view, illuminated in the soft red glow of her alarm clock. Her breath caught in her throat, and she let out an inadvertent gasp.
The stranger had her face.
She staggered back into the wall, tripping over a shoe and knocking a book off a nearby shelf. The stranger did not wake. The young woman scrambled across the floor to the light switch, flooding the room with faint yellow light from the lone bulb above the bed. Still the stranger did not wake.
After standing by the switch for what seemed like an eternity, drawing one ragged breath after another, her fluttering heart seemed to regain a sliver of composure, and its beats became more even and regular. Cautiously, she again made her way around the foot of the bed. She was completely unprepared for the new horror that awaited her.
The stranger was laying in a dark pool of blood. It seeped into the sheets, ran slowly down the side of the mattress, and dripped with stuttering regularity onto the rough wooden floor below. The stranger’s face, her own face, was frozen in a look of neutral surprise, eyes open and staring blankly into the impartial glow of the alarm clock. Her mouth hung slack, a small string of drool trailing down her cheek.
The room began to swim. The young woman knew, beyond any shadow of reason, that she was looking at herself. It was herself laying dead before her, soaking into the sheets. Her legs failing, she fell to the floor, noticing only in passing the men entering her room and moving to stand over her.
“We have her,” She heard one say, as the room swirled into inky blackness.




She swam through the current of dark towards what she knew to be light, fighting an invisible current trying to speed her away. Approaching wakefulness, she became aware of a blinding white light. Fighting the desire to sink back into the cool dark, she screamed into the pain and found herself laying on a small cot in a sunlit room, one window, one chair, one man. She squinted into the light, trying to draw recognition on the man's face. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a middle-aged man, smooth faced and amiable. He shifted in the chair and spoke.
"You're awake."
She looked around, discerning nothing special about the room in which she found herself. Feeling no threat from the man, she nodded slightly.
"Am I dead?" The words croaked through her throat and fell oddly upon her own ears. She swallowed, and tried again. "Am I dead?"
The man cocked his head, shaking it slightly. "No." He paused. "And yes."
She stared.
He attempted to pacify her obvious disquiet. "You are alive, no doubt about that."
"Where am I?" Again, her voice was strained.
"It's a long story. Are you strong enough to hear it?"
She nodded, although she wasn't sure.
The man breathed a deep sigh, and started. "You are in a parallel universe. Do you know what that means?"
She stared.
"Your universe, the world you live in, the world in which you were born and raised, is not alone in existence. There are innumerable worlds and universes and existences alongside your own. It is in one of these other worlds that you find yourself. Every once in awhile, someone from your world slips into ours, much like you did last night. It is the job of men like me to facilitate your transition, and see you back into your own world as quickly as possible."
"Am I dreaming?"
"No. Although you will naturally reach towards that explanation in an attempt to rationalize what you see here, you are very well aware of the difference between reality and dreams. You know you are awake."
She thought about it, and acknowledged that she did indeed know the difference, and was all too aware of the fact that she was awake.
"All the worlds that exist exist in parallel. They exist in the same time, and in the same place. They overlay each other, as if someone drew a line on a sheet of paper, and retraced it an infinite number of times. They are identical in almost every way, with slight exceptions. Here, for example, scientists have discovered the ability to view the happenings in worlds near our own, a technology that doesn't exist in your world."
The young woman was more alert now. She sat up on the bed, turning to face the man. A dizzy spell threatened to take her away, but she recovered. "I'm in another universe?"
The man nodded. "In a manner of speaking. This is your universe, your world, in almost every way. You have not travelled through space, you have not travelled through time. You have fallen through a very weak moment in the existence you were born in, and are now here. You, the you that sits before me, were not born here. But another you was."
"Another me?"
"Yes. You were born there, and you were born here. And you were born in a thousand other universes in a thousand other worlds in a thousand other ways. There are more of you than you can know, living and breathing in the same space and the same time as you."
"You can see this?"
"We can. But we can only see the worlds near us. Imagine it as the layers above us and the layers below us. We can see four universes below us. We assume there are innumerable more below that. But we can only see one layer above us: yours. Your world is the only universe...higher...than our own. For that reason, we assume your world is the main world, the beginning, the ending. Like the trunk of a tree, and we are but the branches."
The young woman swallowed. She was terrified, lost, and confused. But she trusted the man, for lack of choice. "You can get me home?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"Can I go home now?"
He shook his head. "Soon. Very soon. I need to explain something to you, something you are going to find disturbing. But you need to listen, and you need to understand. Otherwise you will never make it home."
She looked into his eyes, and listened.
"We, those of us who exist below you, and those who exist below us, exist for only one reason: to die for you. We call ourselves your alternates. In your world, when you have a near-death experience, we take your place so that you may live on. As far as we can see, we are the only universe of alternates aware of their destiny. We are the only universe with the technology to see the others. We learned through our observations that when one in your world approaches a death that is not his or her predestined end, one of ours is drawn unwillingly, often unknowingly, into a series of events that ends in their death, while their parallel in your world lives. Life and death, tied inseparably to each other through the bonds of existence, must balance in the end, and we must act as counterweight."
The young woman cried, out of fear, out of pain, out of sickness, out of sympathy. "You can't change it? You can't choose to live?"
"No. We have no choice in this. But we accept our fate. We are part of a never ending cycle. We are alternates; we have alternates of our own. We live our lives same as you, knowing that one day we will die. But we die knowing that our death will also be our life."
The young woman curled up inside. "I want to go home."
"I know. Please pay attention. Your alternates don't always share the same situation with you. Some alternates work while others sleep, some worlds are in summer while yours is in winter. Their deaths don't always match what yours would have been. But in some cases, specifically, in our world, your alternates are very, very close to you. The deaths here are exactly what yours would have been had we not taken your place."
The young woman thought of the stranger in her bed. "The girl...in my bed..." she leaned over and retched.
The man nodded slowly, somberly, and waited for her to compose herself. "She was your alternate. A man came in through her window and killed her in her sleep. The same man, in your world, came very close to making the same decisions that led this man into your alternate's room last night. Perhaps in your world, he was a floor higher or lower. But you lived, and your alternate died in your stead."
The room was silent for a moment.
The man continued. "You are connected to all your alternates. You exist with them, you are them. They are you. This connection is strongest in the moment an alternate dies. Have you ever had a dream where you tripped and fell and were immediately jerked awake?"
The young woman looked up sharply.
The man nodded knowingly. "This occurs when an alternate dies in your place. In that moment, your connection is complete. You feel her death. You know what it's like to die, because you have died a thousand times. It is very similar to the feeling of falling."
The young woman thought about this. Her head spun with the implication.
"It is important that you know this. Here, in our world, where we are so close to yours, the connection is the strongest. Occasionally, if the alternate's death is similar enough to the one you narrowly avoided, it is strong enough to literally pull one of yours into our world at the moment of death. This is what happened to you last night. This is how you got here, and this is how you will get home."
"I don't understand."
"The universe must remain balanced. A hole was created when you were pulled from your world. Immediately, an alternate from another universe was pulled in to fill your place. This alternate is likely unaware of any change. She is likely unaware that anything is different. Her world is likely identical to yours. With one exception: she is about to die."
"She's going to die?"
"Yes. She must. The universe is unbalanced. You are here. You are not supposed to die yet; you are not supposed to be missing from your world. Fate chose her to temporarily fill your place because she will soon die and you will have a window to return to your world."
"Like how I came here?"
"Yes. You must be asleep, and you must be aware of the transition, which is why I have told you everything I have. We will drug you to ensure sleep, and you will feel the death. your universe will pull you back, and you must not fight it. When you return, everything will be as it was."
"When will this happen?"
"Soon. Very soon." At the close of this statement, two men entered the room, one carrying a silver briefcase. He opened it, removed a syringe brimming with an unknown liquid, and approached the cot on which the young woman sat.
She recoiled in fear. "You must not fight us," said the man in the chair.  "It is a simple tranquilizer. You will sleep. Do you understand?"
She nodded reluctantly, and allowed the man with the syringe to grasp her wrist and pull it towards himself.
"Remember," said the man in the chair as she felt a small sting. "You must not fight it."
The room faded like a bad dream, and the young woman fell into a deep sleep.



The return to her own world was effortless in its simplicity. She had merely to accept the beckoning pull of her home, and slip easily through the moment of her alternate's death. She awoke the following morning in her bed, eyes hazy and body weak. Had it all been a dream? She couldn't remember. She could see it all so vividly, so unlike a dream. But it seemed so unbelievable. Impossible to believe, unpleasant to believe. Her mind rejected what she had experienced, and she pushed it into the back of her subconsious, to never again think of until the moment she died. 

 That moment, so much nearer than any of us ever care to realize, came to her some time later in the form of a wide square grill and a Ford logo. In the blinding clarity that accompanies the moment of death, the young woman called out desparately to her alternates to save her, to take her place. But it was her turn. Destiny placed her in that intersection on that day. In the rupturing, explosive climax of her death, she felt the familiar sensation that had kept her awake on so many nights. She lost her feet, and plummeted into an unseen abyss.

 A young woman in urban America awoke with a start.

 

What if the system of existence all beings go through is built like a ladder, meaning there is not one, but many phases to pass through before completion? It would stand to reason that since all human beings are born with an innate (albeit vague) moral compass that human life is not the first. What if every phase is about learning to cope with the various issues raised by being born with a subsequently increasing level of clarity to the way you perceive life?
This would make the ultimate purpose of human life to learn to cope with a universe that outright denies our sense of right and wrong, to accept that we, as a species, have little to no understanding of the workings of reality and can do nothing to change it. If by the end of our life we have succeeded in doing so, what would be the primary hurdle for the next plane of reality? What would be the final plane of reality? Would there ever be a "final level"?
If these questions we carry into the end, maybe then heaven is an eternal sense of having something to strive for. Maybe we are already there.

-Al Wright

Contact Conclusion

"Hire, come quick!"
Hire started awake. He must have dozed off.
"Hides' discovered something incredible about the disc."
Hire was up and out his office door before Flame had even finished talking.
The lab was still awash in activity, but less so than before. Glancing at a time keeper, Hire realized that he had been in his office for much longer than he thought. He stepped up to the platform where the most people were now gathered, the same where Hides had been working. He gently elbowed his way to the front of the group.
Hides was talking animatedly. "What'd you find, Hides?" Hire interrupted.
Hides looked like he might explode. "It's unbelievable, sir. You won't believe it. This disk? It's not a tablet, like I thought originally. I was studying all the drawings on here, looking for patterns, and then I saw this. I know it's too small for you to see from there, but every picture on here has a series of dots and dashes around it. Every single one, without fail. I thought at first that it was their language, maybe like combinations of these dots and dashes make words or concepts. But there's no breaks between them, so it can't be that. Then I showed them to Carver, and he of course immediately thought of binary. Ones and zeroes. On and off. I thought, obviously it's binary. I mean, what very language is written on our own probes in case of contact? Binary. So I ran the binary through my communicator, but it couldn't translate it. At least, not into Agian."
"Makes sense. It would probably only be able to translate it into whatever language it originated from."
"Right. That's what I thought. But then I thought of our own probes again, and I realized I had been going about it the wrong way. Any creature intelligent enough to launch a probe would know that its finders wouldn't speak their language. Our probes contain messages in binary, but not to be translated into written language. The binary on our probes is meant to be read geometrically. As in, it would be translated into shapes and pictures. So, I ran the binary again, hoping to come up with some pictures. Again, nothing. I then wondered if the beings had included some sort of key, you know, A=dot dash, B=dot dot dash, that sort of thing. It didn't take me long to realize that they had, and that the key was right under my nose." He swept his hand triumphantly over the disk.
Hire moved over to stand behind Hides and focused on the disk, but couldn't see anything that looked like a key. Now that he was closer, he could see the dots and the dashes, but other than that, all he could see were the pictures...
He gasped. "The pictures?"
Hides nodded. "Exactly. Taken together, the binary coding and the pictures represent the message."
"So what does it say?"
"Well, that's the tricky part. I think this big circle here is a picture of the disk, and the binary seems to describe a way in which the disk and the box it was found with interact. Some of this down here is describing different frequencies on the audio spectrum, this over here is describing speed, I'm thinking audio frequencies and speed at which the message is meant to be listened to. We might have to adjust those in case the extraterrestrials speak at a slower speed or lower frequency than we can understand. Anyway, these two are more instructions on how the disk interacts with the box. I'm thinking this square here represents a viewing medium, and this square with the circle in it represents the box with the disk on top of it."
"So how do the disk and the box interact?"
Hides looked sheepish. "That I don't know. I think I can read the diagram here okay, but the directions don't make sense. I think they want the box to spin while the disc is on top of it. but we have no way of making it spin without the disc falling off. I think maybe there were more pieces that held the disc in place while the box spun. I don't know. That's just a theory. But that's not even the really exciting part."
"What is?"
"The pictures and the diagrams are only part of the message. I looked at the disc with a vision expander, and it looks like it's covered in tiny tracks consisting of alternating raised and depressed sections. Again, the dichotomy, which makes me think more binary. Carver's been working on a way to record what binary is in these tracks without visually following each track and just writing down the pattern, which would take weeks. When he's done, we'll be able to retrieve the messages stored on this disk. I think these diagrams are instructions on how to access the real message, which is recorded on the disk in binary."
Hire thought about it. "It's brilliant, really. we've been trying to find ways to store large amounts of binary on our probes without requiring a power source."
"This would do it. The only thing that would destroy this would be colliding with another celestial body, and odds of that are astronomical."
"Incredible." Hire looked over to Carver, seated at another table. "How long until we can read this?" He asked.
"Just minutes. All I'm doing is rewiring a microscopic image spectrometer to follow the tracks on the disk and record the ups and downs. We should get a clear, translatable, binary code in no time."
Hire took those minutes to ensure the lab's visual/audio recorders were functioning, and set his own communicator to record and store everything it heard. This was potentially one of the greatest moments in all of human history, and he wanted to make sure it was properly recorded.
Carver came over with a small spectrometer suspended between a tall tripod, and positioned it over the disk, which Hides had placed carefully on the box that accompanied the disk in the body of the craft. Carver gently pressed the power section of the spectrometer, and it quietly whirred to life. It scanned around itself, catching its bearings, and then zeroed in on the disk. It moved slowly back and forth, laterally to the tracks on the disk, then snapped all the way to one side of the disk and began slowly spinning in a circle, following the tightly spiraling grooves in the disk.
They waited in frantic anticipation. Apart from Flame asking if Carver's communicator was recording the solid stream of digitized binary being recorded by the spectrometer, which he answered with a nod, the room was silent. The hum of the spectrometer was the only noise. After what seemed like an eternity, the spectrometer’s circles became tighter and tighter, then stopped. The spectrometer reset itself, settling back into its passive position.
"It's done," Carver said, after a moment's pause.
Hire gently lifted the disk from its cradle on the alien box. "There's more on the other side. Let's set the spectrometer to record this while we see if we can translate the binary we have." He flipped the disk over, and laid it back down. Carver again set the spectrometer to scan.
As soon as the spectrometer was spinning away, the scientists of the Galactic Outreach Program gathered around a single communicator, preparing to hear the first words of an extraterrestrial ever heard by man.
Hides' communicator, retrieving the data from Carver's, opened a visual display field in the air above itself, preparing to translate the binary it had received. Hides gave the little machine instructions on how fast to play the data stream, based on data inscribed in binary on the outside of the disk itself. Then, the visual display field went from opaque to white.
Hire found his heart thumping madly within his chest as he waited for something to happen. He didn't have long to wait.
A scratchy noise began to emit from the communicator.
"Is that part of the message?"
Hire shook his head. "Unlikely. Probably a result of tiny imperfections in the coding of the binary on the disk. The spectrometer didn't know what to make of them, so it translated them as white noise."
"Can you have your communicator ignore those bits of data?"
"Um...unfortunately, no. There's no way to tell the junk data from the real data at this point."
The white screen flickered hazily, then faded up into a white screen with a plain black circle in the middle of it.
Carver slapped his thigh in triumph. "That's one of the pictures drawn on the disk, right next to the picture of the visual display field. I think this means we coded it right."
The picture again faded to opaque, but the scratchy noise continued. The excitement was almost palpable.
Then, it happened. A quiet, unintelligible voice began speaking from the communicator.
After a few moments, Hides sat back and put his head in his hands. "It's human."
The room erupted in a babble of moans. "Hold on, we don't know that," Flame said, raising her arms to gain attention.
"Come on, Flame. What are the odds that a non-human entity would use such a similar mode of speech to our own?"
"Well, evolutionarily speaking, it's not that far of a stretch. Almost every creature we've ever encountered uses vocalizations of some kind. Besides, even if the extraterrestrials don't use vocalizations, they could just be attempting to copy what they've observed on our own probes and satellites to make it easier for us."
"Everyone shut up, it's changing."
The voice had now changed pitch. This new pitch was used very briefly, and in a few moments, the voice again changed pitch. As they listened, the voice changed pitch both higher and lower several times.
Hire concentrated. "It...sounds like multiple entities talking."
They continued to listen to the different voices. After a few minutes, the message changed completely. A series of whistles, clicks, and moans emanated from the communicator. The hair on the back of Hire's neck stood on end.
Flame looked pale. "Is that...are those voices?"
Hire scrunched his eyes and shook his head, listening harder. The voices had completely stopped now, and the room was filled with an unsettling montage of noise.
"This must be data corruption. None of this means anything."
"To us. Maybe it means something to the beings who sent this."
After a few minutes, the noises faded, and the scratchy silence again filled the room. Hire found himself relieved. Then, sound again began coming from the communicator. This time, it was definitely, inarguably, music.
"My God..." Flame put her hand over her heart and stepped back. "It's music."
"It could be just another form of communication."
"Listen to it. Rhythmic timing, active quick changes in pitch and dynamic...it's music."
The sound of the alien music filled the room, and the audience was too stunned to say more.
They were interrupted by a soft click coming from the spectrometer. "The other side of disk is coded," Carver said softly.
Hire stood in awe, bathed in the wonder of the extraterrestrial music. "Stop this playing. We need to share this with the world."






The Chairman of the Humanities Board, the only person on Agian 7 who could be said to hold any power, stood directly beside Hire, looking down into the main examining area of the Galactic Outreach Program's main lab. Hire had called a stop to all the work with the exception of Carver, Hides, and Flame, and organized the rest in a massive preparation project. They immediately notified the Humanities Board, the acting head of Agian 7's government, who then notified the other Boards and established a communications link with the leaders of nearby planets. Within an hour it had exploded into a near-riot. The people of Agian 7 has streamed into the streets in droves, attempting to gain access to the labs of the GOP to see the alien device themselves. The Board of Knowledge set up an enormous visual display in the streets outside the GOP for the masses to see. The visual recorder that was linked to this massive display was a short distance to Hire's left, currently focused on the entirety of the craft itself, set up in a dramatic display on one of the tiers across the room. In the center of the room, in the main examination area, Carver, Hides, and Flame were setting up the connection to the display that would exhibit the sights and sounds recorded on the disk. The most exciting part was that Carver had taken a look at the data stream from the back side of the disk, and he thought it could be pictures. Actual visual displays.
The event was being broadcast not only across Agia, but across the vast expanse of space to neighboring planets. This was potentially the biggest moment in human history, and it was being treated as such.
The Chairman of the Humanities Board leaned over to Hire. "I think we should start as soon as your technicians are ready."
Hire nodded and waved to Flame, who returned with an affirmative gesture.
"We're ready. Would you like to make a speech?"
The Chairman chuckled. "No, I think I'm the last person anyone wants to hear from right now. Let's just let the non-human entities speak for themselves."
Hire nodded, and signalled Carver, who started the stream.
The now familiar sound of the voice filled the room, and echoed through the streets of a thousand human habitations across multiple worlds. Husbands and wives gathered with their children, young and old alike. Billions stood still, mesmerised by the voice. When the music started, many people shed tears at the sheer wonder of it. A dozen different musical selections played, each unique in its sound. Some sounded remarkably similar to music heard on human worlds in the past, some sounded completely foreign in every way. At the end of the musical selections, a vast silence was heard as the communicator switched data streams and began playing the data from the backside of the disk.
The first thing to appear was a faded image. Hire's heart leaped into his throat. He could barely make out what appeared to be two beings on the image. The image slurred for a moment, then came into sharp focus.
"They're remarkably humanoid," the Chairman muttered.
Hire thought he was going to be sick. "No, Mr. Chairman. They're human."
The image clearly showed a nude man and woman, standing next to a simple scale for comparison. The image flickered and changed, now showing what appeared to be a young family smiling into the recorder. Various pictures appeared and disappeared, each depicting regular humans performing regular tasks. The disappointment was overwhelming. Hire found himself drawn to the images, each causing his heart to sink further and further into despair. In the streets, the crowds slowly began to disperse, parents leading sad children back to their homes to prepare their evening meals. There was nothing more to see.
When the data stream ran dry, Hire sat and stared at the craft across from him. He laughed softly to himself and shook his head. To think he had raised his hopes on such a meaningless and impossible thing. He left the room. Flame, Carver, and Hides still sat quietly, lost in thought. He retrieved his things from his office and began the commute back home to celebrate his daughter's birthday.
The celebration was subdued, but it's hard to suppress the spirit of a child, and soon Whispers was back to her excited, buoyant self. Hire and his small family laughed and played until well after Agian's sun had disappeared behind the horizon. At the end of the day, Hire found himself on a small hill behind his home, looking up into the vast night sky, seeing the swirling cosmos and blinking stars that represented the arm of the galaxy in which Agia twirled. His communicator buzzed gently, informing him of an incoming call. He answered it as Whispers appeared over the crest of the hill, silhouetted in the glowing light of their home. She came to him, and he picked her up in his arms.
"Yes?"
"Hire. It's Carver. I know it's late, but I discovered something you might be interested in."
"What is it?"
"I ran the voices through translation software half a dozen times, and I managed to translate part of the transmission into Agian."
Hire was tired, and he found he really didn't care, but he went along with it. "What does it say?"
"It's not much. I think a lot of it is in different languages, and the translator doesn't have a big enough sample of each language to translate them all. There seems to be one language used more than the others. The biggest segment I could get says something like: 'As the general secretary of the communities which are...together...united, I guess, something about one hundred and forty-seven member states, which represent almost all of the inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.' The rest is too corrupted to make sense."
"I've never heard of any planet close to that name."
"No one has. I don't think it exists. But you remember that painting on the outer shell of the craft?"
"Blue square with red and white stripes next to it?"
"That's the one. We still believe it could be a map. The blue section looks like it could have stars represented on it. The stripes could be some sort of measurement of distance or relationship. And you know the characters next to it? The collection of straight and curved lines? Turns out it's a primitive system of writing. We put the characters through our translation software, assuming that each symbol represents one of the sounds heard in the recording. We had to fill in some gaps, and make some assumptions, but we got it. It says: 'The united states of America.' I think this craft could still be valuable, Hire. I think we should continue to find out what we can about it. I'm going to send it to the guys at the..."
"Carver, I'm tired. I'm going to go to bed. Take tomorrow off if you want to.
"Uh-huh. Okay Hire. See you later."
Hire disconnected the communicator, and drew his daughter in close.
"Were you eavesdropping?" He flicked her nose playfully.
She smiled and lowered her head. "Maybe."
Hire laughed. "How was your birthday, beautiful girl?"
She waited for a moment before answering. "It was fun, but I wish I could have talked to extratellestibles."
Hire hugged her tighter. "I know, sweetheart. I'm sorry."
She smiled at him. "It's okay, daddy. It's not your fault."
They were quiet for a moment, each admiring the celestial parade of twinkling lights above them.
"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"What's the united states of America?"
Hire shook his head. "I don't know, Whispers, and I guess it doesn't really matter."
Together they stood on that hilltop on a cool Agian night and looked up into the stars, overwhelmed with the knowledge that they were truly, completely, alone.

Contact: Part II

"And you're sure it's not one of ours?"

"Hire, no human has ever made anything like this. I've never seen anything even close to this. I guarantee it's not one of ours."

Hire frowned. Something seemed odd, he just couldn't figure out what.

He rocked slightly with the motion of the transporter as it moved over uneven ground. His commute to the office was shorter than most, but still took more time than he would like. Today, of course, he had something to occupy his mind. His excitement had soured into distrust. It wouldn't do to believe in something so impossible as contact with extraterrestrials. He didn't want to be disappointed.

Molds Flame, the head of contact branch was on the communicator with Data Carver and Hides-With-Dye, the project engineers. They were both brilliant young men who could speak the languages of math, electronics, and hardware, but they made up for this efficiency with a severe deficiency in social interaction. They were the right men for the job, however, and their social abilities didn't matter.

They had been catching him up on the morning's events during his ride. Halfway through the sleep cycle the night before, one of their deep-space probes had picked up information on a non-natural object. These probes were designed to recognize when something they encountered was composed of more than two minerals, indicating a likelihood of being crafted by an intelligent being. The probe had hooked this object and jumped back to Agia, arriving near the end of the sleep cycle. The engineers had taken one look at it, and called Hire right away. According to their description, the thing was definitely crafted, but he couldn't understand how they were describing it, and would have to wait until he could see it for himself.

Flame continued on in his ear. "The strangest thing is that it comes apart. It's like whoever crafted this intended for it to be disassembled. Can you imagine building an interstellar craft with detachable parts? I'd think it would have fallen apart by now." That was interesting, Hire thought. No human had built a spacecraft such as this, as far as he could remember. He hadn't spent years studying human history, but he couldn't remember anything like this coming to the surface. The first spacecraft that he knew of were built thousands of years ago by humans on Utopia and Ryhona, both now gone.

"I'm almost at the office, Flame. I'll be in in a few minutes to look at it."

"Carver's been poking around it's insides for hours now. He hasn't left it since it came."

"I'm not surprised. Flame, I'm going to go, I'm almost there. I'll see you in person in a few minutes."

  

"I think he's found some operational components. He says if he just takes the time to study it..."

Flame droned on. Her communicator was struggling to keep up with her fast pace while still making her sound confident and sure, as communicators were designed to do. Hire sighed and half-listened as the transporter pulled up outside the offices of the Galactic Outreach Program. He stepped off into the bright morning, and the transporter whirred away softly.

He made his way past the initial entry, and scanned his identification at reception. The automated greeter chimed him a merry greeting, then unlocked and opened the door leading to the labs.

"I need to go to my office," he told the greeter, indicating another door. "I need to deposit my things."

"Molds Flame requested that you make your way directly to the labs."

"I'll bet she did," muttered Hire, listening to Flame still talking in his ear. He made his way through the lab entrance and walked down the hall to the main lab.

The main lab was designed like a theater-in-the-round, with a large open examining area in the middle surrounded by raised platforms carrying seats, tables, coolers, and other examination equipment. The place was buzzing with activity. Technicians were bustling around the raised platforms, discussing things in large groups. The main examination area was so crowded, Hire couldn't see through to the object itself, with the exception of the top quarter of the thing, which poked out above the heads. He could see Flame standing in the middle, her green hair standing out from the crowd. He made his way to her, edging his way past the throngs of technicians.

He could hear Flame's voice echoed as he came to stand beside her. "Flame, I'm here."

She looked up quickly at him. "Oh." She disconnected her communicator with a flick of her wrist

.  

Hire Looked at the object and drew in a breath. Flame was right, no human had constructed this.

The main body of the craft was golden in color, and geometric in shape. It appeared to be covered in some sort of foil. On one side of the main body was a large white section of what looked like what had once been a parabolic dish of some kind. It looked as though at one point there had been several arms protruding from the thing, but the jagged edges indicated that most of them had since been torn off. Carver, the lead engineer, was currently elbow deep in the main body.

"Tell me what you've found, Carver."

"It's incredible," He replied, not looking up from what he was doing. "We found several internal components that not only could come apart, I think they were designed to come apart. They were stored in this main body here in a little chamber down in the center. I sent Hides off to examine them more, he should be around somewhere."

Hire glanced up to one of the platforms, where he saw Hides' back bent over one of the examining tables. "Is there anything on the top?" The entire craft stood just taller than Hire himself.

Flame jumped in. "You wouldn't believe it. There were markings along the top. We took these visual records." Her communicator jumped to life, hearing the implications in her voice, and projected several images into the air in front of her. Hire's eyes widened in disbelief. On one side, there was what appeared to be a small, simple geometric painting. Surrounding this painting were several plain markings, consisting of straight and curved lines.

"Do you know what those markings are?"

"We haven't thought too much about it. They could be simple drawings, depicting life forms on the planet where this originated."

"I suppose they could be. What about this painting?" He indicated the small but colorful diagram.

"Well, you see this section here?" Flame pointed to a small portion of the painting. "I think these could represent stars. This whole piece could be a visual representation of where their planet lies in space."

"Incredible. If this really is from an non-human life form, the implications are astonishing."

"I know. This would mean they have eyes similar to our own. They see and work in geometric shapes and patterns. They must see a similar color spectrum as us. You see the reds here? The gold? And, if this diagram does represent their place in the universe, it means that they have sent something to space, to understand that they sit in its vast emptiness. What if they are interstellar travellers? What if we..."

"Don't get too excited," Hire cautioned. "We don't know what we're dealing with yet."

Flame nodded. She was about to say something more when she was called away.

Hire looked over at Hides, and began to pick his way through the confusion to where Hides sat.

"What are you working on?" Hire asked him.

Hides looked up, startling Hire by the size of his eyes. Hides lowered to magnification lenses he was wearing and pointed triumphantly at what was lying on the table.

"These were inside the main craft. Can you believe it?"

Hire looked at the objects on the table, surprised by their simplicity. On one side was a small golden disc, no bigger than a serving platter, and next to it was a box no bigger than the disc.

"Do you know what they do?" Hire asked.

"No, but see how this box has a circular indentation on this side, I think these are two pieces of a whole. I think they're meant to go together." Hides gingerly picked up the disc and laid it flat on the box. "See? It's a perfect fit. The disc settles right into this groove. Now the disc itself, we think, is some sort of...tablet. Like the ancient Utopians used to use? We think the non-humans here may communicate by drawing pictures on tablets like this." He showed the disc to Hire, who realized for the first time that there were indeed small pictures on the disk. They were obviously extremely worn with time, but he could make out an exploding star, several squares, and some circles.

"Are these scratches?" He asked, indicating a series of jagged marks.

"I don't think so. They follow a strange pattern. I think they're part of the design."

Hire nodded. "Keep at it." He laid his hand on Hides' shoulder and moved back to the main area. "Flame, I'm going to my office. Notify me of any dramatic changes."

She nodded. "You don't want to be here in case we discover something?"

  

"I'll be just down the hall."

"Keep your communicator open."

He smiled, and moved out the door into the quiet hallway.

His office was cold and clean, the way he liked it. He needed this space to think. The events of the day were disturbing. He wasn't sure what to think. The first recorded human history came from twin planets Utopia and Ryhona. They had long since burned away in a supernova, but their location was marked on every stellar map. The distance was too far to travel for the average human, but some made the pilgrimage. They had been part of a small system of six inhabitable planets, all of which were colonized before their sun went nova. Since human habitation had been recorded on both prior to either gaining the ability to travel in space, it was theorized that humans were in fact much older than either planet, and must have colonized both Utopia and Ryhona around the same time. But no physical records existed of any prior habitation, and so it was nothing more than a theory. Regardless, Utopia, the first to travel through space, made her first crafts out of solid pieces of material. Humanity had followed this pattern since, and that had been thousands of years previous. As far as he knew, no human had ever made a craft even close to resembling the one that lay down the hall. Real contact with non-human entities. The thought sent a thrill down his spine.