The Unearthing (10 page)

“God…” he heard himself whine: A prayer; a lament; a useless last word.

Jude stopped, standing in front of the Ranger. He began speaking. Behind them, the rumbling stopped and the horizon lit up in a western dawn.

♦♦♦

The axiom that those who do not learn from History’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them is true. It is also true that those who learn from History’s successes can repeat them as well.

When in the closing decades of the twentieth century a billionaire industrialist named Ted Turner created an entire cable network centered on the news he was for the most part considered a fool. But CNN’s success led to a host of copycat all-news stations, some of which were still cropping up when the Photonic Revolution sounded television’s death knell. Multichannel access and superfast computers combined with the power of the new World Grid, led to view-on-demand television. The principle was simple: The user could program their consoles to watch whatever show they wanted, whenever they chose to do so.

As Ted Turner had seen the potential of cable so did Joel Dubois see the potential of the new World Grid and view-on-demand technology to fuse into one super-medium. After hiring the best reporters he could and setting up a database of all the world’s news services Dubois set about creating software that would allow the viewer to decide what news they watched, calling up related stories, background information, biographies and a host of other facts at the touch of a keystroke. He then created a Grid spar large enough to accommodate millions of channels of outgoing and incoming information. Critics said that INN would fail because it was too complicated and would overwhelm the viewer or the user with information overkill. Quite the opposite happened.

In the first month it was operational INN received a million subscriptions. That doubled before its second operational month ended. Over the years the Interactive News Network had been refined and was continually being upgraded to keep it at the leading edge. Like CNN before, INN spawned a host of copycats, all of which lived in its shadow. But INN also generated subsidiaries, such as the Interactive Sports Network, the Interactive Entertainment Network and the Interactive Arts Network.

What led to INN’s greatest success was its up-to-the-minute news format, which was derived from link up sites to its Grid spar where anyone with new information could send in contributions. To avoid useless news stories from cranks, frauds and lunatics, special context-recognition hardware was designed to prioritize information. Questionable data was put through a rigorous screening process that used search algorithms to determine all the facts; and data that was flagged as higher priority was put through an immediate review. The information was so well filtered that never once in its history did INN have to issue a retraction, despite times when it broke stories that were debunked by the rest of the world’s media until all the facts came out. INN had offices in every capital around the globe and could be accessed by anyone at anytime through the World Grid. Its head offices, however, remained in Dubois’s hometown of Ottawa, Ontario where years before Dubois had made his first million simply by purchasing IPO shares in an upstart photonics manufacturer.

Two hundred employees worked each eight-hour shift, scanning the end-results of their information filtering process for the latest news. The balance of INN’s employees were computer, communications and broadcast technicians. There were no paid news anchors. Annanova, a British experiment in virtual news casting had first inspired Dubois to found INN. Expanding on technology developed by the people behind annanova.com, INN had almost no on-air talent beyond a handful of field reporters. Few people outside INN realized that their favourite and often most trusted news anchors were nothing more than digital ghosts.

Stories uplinked to INN literally had to reach the top before being posted onto INN’s news site or put out for broadcast. They came in through the basement where INN had several interlinked Grid access hubs and were filtered through the first tier of computers which separated the stories by keywords and again by category. The second tier of INN’s computers looked for story corroboration by checking the uplinks against stories brought in through other news services and versus other corroborating uplinks. If the files were similar they were merged and sent on to another level. If the stories were conflicting both articles were flagged for research. When no corroboration existed the stories were checked for general facts that could be confirmed. Enough corroboration transferred a story to a research station, where live operators made the final confirmation of the facts. The stories were then either dropped as false (most of the submissions), or sent on to an editor who would then decide which stories would receive highest priorities on postings or broadcasts.

The story out of New Mexico had been sent to Richard Mayhew’s research station. While reading it over, he began to wonder how in the hell it had gotten so far up the editorial chain. He was about to dump the story when the list of corroborating links began loading and continued to load. First, substantiation came from Concord 3. Then from eyewitnesses and then from an observation satellite sliced into by some kids at Texas A&M. Mayhew checked the source of the broadcast and began looking at the chain of events that was related to the story. Then he linked to the satellite feed and dumped a copy of the story to an optic slip while printing up a quick summary of what he had just seen. Mayhew tore from the research operator’s console bank and charged straight for the office of Ruth Tyler, INN’s overnight Broadcast Editor.

“What is it?” Tyler asked, having been caught in the middle of an embarrassingly thorough armpit scratch. Mayhew smiled; not at Ruth’s awkwardness, but for the information he handed her.

“It's the story of the millennium. I mean that, Ruth. I really fucking mean it.” Tyler put the slip into her reader and scanned the document onscreen. When the audio began, the voice of James Johnson squawked briefly through the room before Tyler could slip on her earpiece. She listened and watched for a couple of moments. Then she turned her attention back to Mayhew.

“Can we verify its legitimacy?”

“It passed through all the filters,” Mayhew said, “It also coincides with that mysterious flare of light reported from New Mexico, the Grid being down in north-western New Mexico and the sudden signal loss reported from Concord 3. It’s way too elaborate to be a hoax. There hasn’t been enough time to dummy up something like this. We're also already getting some sporadic uplinks that corroborate much of the data here.” Tyler was silent a long moment, not weighing the story as Mayhew thought, but in fact pondering the implications of the information she had on her console at that moment. She sighed, feeling her breath shudder in her throat. Just based on what she had read she was in shock.

“Run it unedited on the next three continental news updates,” She said, calmly, “Edit it and run it on all globals after that. Then start cross-referencing the information into the interactive format.” She looked at him a long moment, her eyes wide with a vehement fire.

“Richard? What the fuck are you still doing in my office?
GO
!”

♦♦♦

Colonel Jude crossed his arms behind his back, standing with his legs akimbo. He stared down at the desert floor contemplatively one long moment before looking up at the crippled Ranger.

“Gentlemen, let’s not make this any harder than we have to. Step out of the vehicle, please.” Suddenly the sky behind the transport lit up in blinding blue flare. Jude’s first thought was
atomic blast
and his first instinct was to duck, shielding his eyes. If he could get back to the insulated interior of the helicopter he’d be safe from the x-ray blast and radiation wave and hopefully they were well beyond the shockwave and firestorm zones. But the light didn’t turn from blue-white to red; it stayed blue and stayed fairly constant. There was no echoing thunder rolling in, no blast of wind. When Jude dared look again it was as though the Aurora Borealis had moved several thousand kilometres south and landed on the ground. There was a shimmering luminescence to the horizon and Jude had no doubt that this was coming from the Object, back at the dig site. He keyed a sequence in on the wristband console he wore, linking himself with his troops still at the dig site; if there still was a dig site.

“Knight to Rooks Seven through Twelve!” he called into his headset, “All pieces’ status! Repeat: all pieces’ status!” The replies were faint, staticky and full of insane background noise:

“Rook Eight here,”

“Rook Nine,”

“Rook Eleven reporting in: Rook Twelve is down; she fell into a fissure that opened beneath her.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jude demanded. Rooks Seven and Ten still hadn’t been accounted for.

“The object has gone active,” The voice of Rook Nine reported back, “We are now dealing with a Type Seven Omega!” Jude’s heart stopped. There were no contingencies for a Type Seven Omega. When the Type Seven classification had been established for the discovery of alien artifacts or encounters, there were different sub-classes assigned for each possible category: Alpha for recoverable or securable artifact, Beta for deniable contact and so on up until Seven-Omega: an encounter or artifact seen or experienced by a large group of people, unsecurable, unrecoverable and undeniable. Jude gestured to Rook Two, whose attention was trying to stay focused on the four civilians who were ignoring the soldiers now entirely to stare west at the shimmering blue lights on the horizon, itself.

“Rook Two, secure the prisoners in Ranger Two and let’s proceed back to target zone,” Jude looked around at his other troops.

“Come
on
,” he shouted, snapping them back to reality, “Let’s go; Rook One, Rook Five,
get the bird ready for dust-off
! Double time! Go!”

Jude walked up to Professor Echohawk as his soldiers pulled the archaeologist from the transport.“Now do you understand Professor?” he asked, “
This
is what I meant when I told you that you had no idea what you were dealing with. What the fuck is going to happen now?”

Echohawk only smiled. “History,” Was the last thing the old archaeologist said to Jude before climbing into the Ranger.

♦♦♦

The door to the brig opened and General Roy Harrod stood in the hatchway. One of the soldiers quick-stepped in, bellowing at the prisoners.

“ATTENTION ON DECK! A FLAG OFFICER IS PRESENT, MAGGOTS!” Cohen and Boucher actually saluted. Donnelly stood at attention. Benedict looked up from his relative position over everyone else’s heads. Bloom crossed her arms over her chest. Harrod stepped into the room.

“You and your subordinates have done well for yourselves, Lieutenant-Colonel,” He said. Bloom regarded him with all the casual disinterest of a cat.

Harrod continued speaking: “You've managed to rack up enough charges to keep you in prison for the rest of your lives,” He said, “Among the worst charges are that you've endangered certain ongoing missions vital to national security and that you hijacked the operation of an international space station.”

“Now
that’s
the pot calling the kettle black,” Benedict said, “Sir.” Harrod stared at the younger officer for one long, terrible moment. Benedict was a Major, Harrod a General. Certain things just weren’t said, weren’t done. Harrod finally chose to resume his tirade, turning his attention back on Bloom:

“Fortunately for you, for even greater reasons of national security we need to keep these operations hidden. We're going to help each other out. I'm going to let you go. You're all going to keep quiet about the fact that the DIA was trying to cover up the existence of the Ship and anything else you think you believe. Everybody wins. Our operations remain secret and you get to live a while longer. Do yourself a favour. Accept my offer. I could silence you otherwise but it would be much more complicated that way.”

♦♦♦

They returned to the site; Rook Five in the helicopter navigating for the Rangers on the ground. The object, now so obviously a ship, was unearthed. A gargantuan luminous gold and black craft, the Ship shone under the brilliance of its own blue lights, laid out in vast trenches across its surface. As they approached it, the Ship dominated the landscape around them. Flying over it Jude remarked that it became the only ground-based point of reference. The violence of its unearthing over, the Ship had begun to sing. There was no other way to describe what it was doing, Jude reflected. All around them, echoing though the desert and across the great plain of the Ship itself a strange, haunting sound resonated. It was at once reminiscent of crystal and of whale song. There seemed to be an almost identifiable progression to the slow, pulsing music, but it remained surrealistically out of reach. Jude sat inside the helicopter. His earpiece was turned up to maximum gain and still he had trouble hearing his surviving troops’ reports over the Shipsong. And in truth, he had even more difficulty concentrating on them. Even his cold soldier’s heart was moved by the never-before heard alien sounds resounding through the desert night outside. It was an appreciable moment of pure and perfect beauty; something

Jude could not get used to, something he would never forget.

Forgotten by their captors by the sight of the massive Ship, Echohawk, Santino, James and Peter made their way to the edge of the drop-off, looking over the almost completely unburied Ship. It filled the horizon from end to end: a massive, luminous golden city. From the edge of the desert surrounding the Ship the drop to the leading edge of the alien artifact was easily several kilometres. The Ship had moved millions, perhaps
billions
of tonnes of earth to reveal itself. The question on Echohawk’s mind was what had happened to that earth? The land bridge, a kilometre-wide peninsula that the Ship had not destroyed in its unearthing, connected the outside world to the top of the dome of the Ship, and the Pyramid whose accidental discovery had led to the revelation of this millions-year-old secret. The apparent cracks and rivulets across the Ship’s surface were glowing blue from within. Random-seeming lights dotted the surface of the Ship, lending more credence to the effect of seeing a city laid out before them. All around on the peninsula were people, now numbering close to a thousand. Santino suspected that number would continue to swell. A group of young people had driven up in a flatbed truck and were blasting music from a large stereo system. Oddly enough, the music they have elected to play was symphonic. The piece in question is an industrial technodelic version of Beethoven's Ninth. It echoed eerily into the canyon created by the Ship. Echohawk looked back over the crowd and back at the Pyramid below them.