Chapter 7

April 7, Sunday. 08:00. Alister 5 reporting.

It was Sunday morning. The two days since my last report were filled with more speculation about what Elliot could glean from the mysterious text from the incoming alien message. Since its appearance in Earth’s Oort Cloud the ship was rapidly decelerating, and still constantly repeating the 15.5 gigabyte message. Nothing new there, it was just like a TopTic message on the old, defunct TubeYou program: at the end it would just repeat. Keeping the existence of the alien craft out of the hands and minds of the militaries of Earth quickly became a lost cause. When a pencil-shaped thing, hundreds of meters long, suddenly appeared in the Oort Cloud, and slowly losing speed, it soon got the attention of the Earth-bound astronomers and astrophysicists. The news of its existence quickly got the attention of the military space forces. The projections of where it would intersect the Earth’s orbit was constantly being updated, since its velocity changed with the passing hours. It was now passing through Jupiter’s orbit. Of interest to the watchers was a deviation in its trajectory to pass relatively close (0.5 of an astronomical unit – the average distance from Earth to the sun – is close, right? About 75 billion meters.) to Europa, Jupiter’s sixth moon.

The group of Crackpots thought this was significant, since they felt it was sending the message about the makeup of sea water, or trying to receive one. Of course the scientific community was furiously trying to decode the message, to no avail. The Crackpot group had decided early not to go public. That would come out in Sunday’s G12 meeting. Elliot had barely slept the last two days. The caffeine was taking its toll on him, but he was fueled by something else entirely. The thrill of discovery. The thrill of understanding something that had eluded the brightest minds for millennia. And now it was in his hands. Or, more accurately, in his brain. The group huddled around the table, the laptops pushed aside to make way for the paper printouts of the alien message. The symbols had danced in Elliot’s mind, weaving a tapestry of meaning that was just beyond his grasp.

“That’s it. I’m done. Got through section 8. It’s mostly empty. Like section 2: it’s just ‘accepting incoming. ‘Then back to the beginning of the message.”

Suzi and Dave huddled around the young autistic, who was exhibiting being able to talk more. No one knew the reason, but suspected his immersion in the alien message was involved.”

Fantastic Elliot!We never would have had an idea about this message without your effort!You are our hero!”They had a scant eleven hours before the G12 meeting. The political leaders were each buzzing about in their own individual beehives. The agenda had been scrapped, and they all knew that they would be discussing what to do next. Each was sending non-stop message at the alien ship, no response. They now had visual images of the visitor’s ship. It was a sleek, black, needle-like structure. It looked like it was made of the darkest obsidian, with no visible seams or joints. The size was hard to gauge due to the distance, but it was definitely large. The consensus was that it was long, approaching a half-mile, with a diameter that was only fifty meters. And it was definitely headed towards Earth. As it moved closer and closer to Earth, the projections about where it might land were narrowing down to somewhere in the vast Pacific-Indian Ocean stretch. I pointed out that this was monsoon season in the Indian Ocean starting in the equatorial belt.

“Just what we need. A tropical monsoon to make everything just THAT more complicated,” grumbled Steve Harkness.

“It doesn’t have to be OUR problem,” Freida Helberg replied.

“The whole world is looking now.”

“Well,” Suzi said, “We have only a few hours to decide on the composition of the delegation to appear in the G12 meeting room. I think we should all go ... except Elliot and Dave.” That will mean five teleportations,” Santiago said.