Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone (3 page)

Ken jumped in, commenting, “Radio signals travel at the speed of light in the vacuum of space.”

“Right,” Sam pointed at Ken, “a law of physics that we’ve accepted from the beginning. And because of the shear number of signals we’ve been receiving for five years, we’ve had a lot of other things on our minds, so why question such a basic axiom?”

Charles remained silent, feeling that excitement growing.

“I’ve noted a few discrepancies here and there since I joined SETI, but they were all relatively small, so I figured we’d iron them out at a later date. Take this for instance ...” He scrolled halfway up the page, highlighting another Arthian transmission. “This signal was picked up about six weeks earlier, and yet the computer estimates the point of origin as
four light-years
further away. But it’s definitely Arthian in origin, so
if
it had come from the exact same planet or planetary system, we shouldn’t be hearing it for another four years—”

“Which means that the Arthians are spread out over at least four light-years,” Charles jumped in. “Which means they’re capable of interstellar travel.” His eyes widened at the prospect.

“Kick ass!” from Ken.

Sam continued, “But one thing we’ve had to continually do from the very beginning is slow a lot of these signals down, way down. Not all of them — for instance, the very first one that
you
picked up, Doctor Foster, didn’t need it — but the majority of them have. The key assumption has been that our intergalactic neighbors have been using software and hardware far more advanced than ours, so much faster that it’d be like comparing the processing speed of today’s computers to an Apple IIe from way back when. One of the professors who toured through here last year even argued that this might be why we’d never heard anything prior to the White Flash, that our old equipment and computers were just too slow to understand what they were hearing and that the White Flash was a red herring.”

Charles dismissed that with a wave of his hand, but did not interrupt.

“Then ...” Sam paused for emphasis. “... we received another set of transmissions from the Arthians last night, and now I think we might’ve been wrong all along.”

Sam turned back to his computer just long enough to highlight another transmission near the bottom of the list. Ken grinned in expectation of Sam’s getting to the crux of their discovery.

“There were three transmissions, all so close together that the computer assumed they were interrelated. They’re not. I believe the timing was just a coincidence.” He drew a deep breath, then continued, “These transmissions have led me to two conclusions, only
one
of which I shared with Ken this morning.”

“Dude!” Ken blurted, offended.

Sam offered a crooked smile. “What we talked about was important enough, don’t you think, Ken?” He returned his focus to Charles and leaned in. “I don’t think some of these transmissions we’ve been hearing are nearly as old as we’ve been assuming. I think these people —
many
of these peoples, but definitely the Arthians — have faster-than-light communication.”

Sam paused to let that sink in.

Charles struggled to remain objective, to remain impartial. “I think Albert Einstein just rolled over in his grave.” Sam chuckled at that, as did Ken. “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light.”

Sam shrugged, and replied, “With respect to Einstein, he didn’t have all the information.”

“Clearly,” Ken jumped in. “But you still haven’t explained that!
If
they’re using some kind of FTL communication, how the hell are our
radio
dishes picking it up?”

“Signal spill,” Sam answered. “Hasn’t it bothered either of you how
clear
these signals are? I mean, sure, we have to clean them up a bit, but some of these transmissions come through clearer than my cell phone does.”

Charles nodded. “Yes, I’ll give you that one. Thousands of light-years —
tens
of thousands in some cases — and yet ...”

“Right,” Sam stated. “ ‘And yet.’ That’s what I think has been happening, at least over the past five years. Something has changed. If the White Flash could rewrite the DNA of human beings, who says it hasn’t changed the fabric of the universe itself, too? I think this faster-than-light communication of theirs is ‘leaking’ radio transmissions that we are now able to pick up, slow down, and understand. The irony is that if, for whatever reason, they were deliberately trying to keep us out of the galactic loop, they probably have no idea that we can hear them now. If they have FTL communication, why would they bother checking for
radio
spill?”

Charles straightened. “An interesting theory, Sam. But if your paranormal ability is linguist in nature, I’m not sure how that qualifies—”

Sam flicked a finger at the highlighted line on his screen. “
That
Arthian transmission originated just eleven-hundred light-years from here.”

“You’re positive, Sam?” Charles demanded. “You’re absolutely, one-hundred percent certain that it is another
Arthian
 transmission?”

Sam nodded. “I’d swear it in any court of law. Even if I didn’t know the language, the different races we’ve picked up all have their own ‘style,’ like the difference in people’s handwriting. That signal is spoken in the Taalu language, and was transmitted using Taalu technology. It’s them, Doctor Foster. It’s a hell of a lot closer than the majority of the others.
And
the date-stamp puts it at just
thirty-seven years
newer than the transmission I just played for you earlier.”

Charles finally allowed himself to express the exuberance he’d been holding back. “And if they traveled sixteen-hundred light-years in just thirty-seven years’ time ...”

“Then they must be able to
travel
faster than the speed of light. Which makes the idea that they might be able to
communicate
faster than light a much easier pill to swallow, huh?”

“You could say that.”

“Hot damn,” Ken broke in, “Roddenberry called it! But what if they traveled that distance over a long period of time? I mean, if they had generational ships or cryogenic ships or something, they could
have traveled the distance at sub-light speeds. Maybe the transmissions
are
as old as we first calculated, but the Arthians are just, like, really spread out, a big galactic empire.”

Charles shook his head. “No, we’re talking a distance of sixteen-hundred light-years, Ken. The time it would take to cover that distance at sub-light speeds, even if they were able to push close enough to light-speed to use time dilation to their advantage ...” He shook his head again. “No, Sam’s right. They must have faster-than-light travel — whether it’s warp speed, worm holes, jump gates, it really doesn’t matter. And they almost certainly have faster-than-light communication. And
that
 means we’ve been wrong about how old some of these messages are.” He guffawed once. “Jesus, we’re going to have to completely rewrite the software for this. Factor in just how much we have to slow down the transmissions, factor in Sam’s date-stamp, factor in ... it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

“I’ll call a staff meeting for tomorrow morning. There’s going to be resistance to this, Sam, a
lot
of resistance. That’s just how these things are. But I want the SETI team here updated on this right away. Then we’ll work our way outward, one step at a time.”

“I understand,” Sam said.

Ken clapped his hands once and spread them wide. “Okay, am I the only one here who’s dying to know about that
other
conclusion of yours? The one that you kept secret from
me.
Come on, dude. Give!”

For the first time, Sam showed obvious tension, appearing reluctant to continue. Charles raised an eyebrow.

“Doctor Foster,” Sam lowered his voice, “it might be for the best if we kept this, um ... just between the two of us. For now.”

“Hey!” Ken protested.

Choosing to err on the side of caution, Charles said, “Ken, why don’t you go grab yourself another Red Bull ...”

“But—”

“Ken.”

Downhearted, Ken shot Sam a dirty look as he sulked away.

Charles turned back to Sam. “Okay, UT, you’ve got my attention.”

Sam peered over to where the other interns were working, then rolled his chair a few inches closer to Charles, leaning forward and lowering his voice even further. Intrigued, Charles mirrored him.

“It’s about that third transmission,” Sam said. “The last one that came through with the others.”

“What about it?”

“It appears ... that it originated just
seventy
light-years from here.”

Charles’ jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, why didn’t you mention this before, in front of Ken? Doesn’t this further your theory?”

“Oh, it does,” Sam agreed, though he still seemed unhappy about it. “Very much so.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Two things. First, I’m not entirely certain about it; neither is the computer. This final transmission is a little different from the others. They’re speaking the Taalu language, and it carries the Taalu ‘handwriting’ I talked about, but between the bandwidth and the date-stamp ... it’s like they were trying to keep quiet, to whisper, so to speak.”

Charles knew all about bandwidths, but ... “What was wrong with the date-stamp?”

“It was sort of abbreviated. Like if someone wrote the date as ‘oh-seven-forty’ instead of ‘July, Nineteen-Forty.’ ” He shrugged. “That’s just an analogy, but ... I think they were trying to broadcast covertly or something. Or hell, maybe it was just, I don’t know, a ship-to-ship transmission instead of planet-to-planet. If I’m right about their not knowing we can hear them ...”

“Okay,” Charles admitted, “that’s a little curious. What’s the other problem?”

Sam glanced at the interns one more time before answering. “The proximity between the Arthian’s usual point of origin and the newer ones ... Doctor Foster, they’re not just
generally
closer, not just spreading out like the ‘empire’ Ken mentioned. They’re getting
directly
closer. I mean, I cross-checked it with the astronomy database, to be sure.” He looked Charles straight in the eye. “It’s an almost perfectly straight line, Doctor Foster. That’s why the three messages happened to arrive so close together even though they originated so far apart. And that last one — the close one, the quiet one —
specifically
mentions a yellow sun. That could be a coincidence, sure, there are a lot of yellow suns out there.  But I don’t think so.” He released a tight breath. “Charles, they aren’t just getting closer ... I think they might be coming
here
.”

All at once, Charles understood why Sam the Universal Translator had kept this to himself at first. This was
huge
. The Taalu — their “cousins,” the Arthians — might be coming to Earth.

As a member of SETI and a lifelong dreamer, it was the most exciting news he could have possibly imagined.

But as a husband, a father, and a man living in a world that had already gone crazy five years ago with the Paranormal Effect ... it scared him.

YESTERDAY

THE PARANORMALS TODAY

BY JEFFREY LAWRENCE

6TH GRADE - MISTER RAGLAND

Hello. My name is Jeffrey Lawrence. I am a 6th-grader in Mister Ragland’s class. Last year I wrote an essay for Miss Wallis’ class about the Paranormals, and I must have done a good job because Miss Wallis turned it in to the Principal and they ended up having a whole big meeting about it and even passed out copies at the P.T.A. (that’s for Parent-Teacher Association) and everything. But the best part is, I got an A+!

Now the school has a regular P.T.A. meeting every 9-weeks to talk about the Paranormals and how kids are handling it and if there are any kids who have turned Paranormal in our school (there was a kid named Richard Anyon who disappeared a few months ago, and the rumor was he had turned Paranormal but it turned out his Dad had taken him away from his Mom).

Since I wrote the essay that started the meetings a year ago, Mister Ragland asked if I would write a new one, to share my feelings and thoughts about what all has gone on and changed for the past year. I told him I would if I could do it instead of reading this
boring
book he gave us for English. He said he would think about it so I wrote this right away to convince him.

It has now been almost 6 years since the White Flash happened and people started changing. For a long, long time a lot of people who got powers from the Paranormal Effect used their new powers for crime. The Government put together a group called the P.C.A. (that’s for Paranormal Control Agency) to fight the super-powered criminals, which are called
Rogues
. I thought it was sad that no one wanted to be a super-hero instead.

The best part is, I put that in the essay and I got my wish! A real live super-hero finally showed up! His name is
Vortex
. He can shoot lasers and some kind of pressure stuff from his eyes and he’s really tough and he can kick as high as my Dad’s head. His costume is black and gold and a little shiny all over, and it has a cape and everything. His symbol on his chest is kind of weird (my big brother calls it a “trippy spiral”), but I like it. Vortex helps the police with Rogues whenever the P.C.A. isn’t there, and sometimes he’ll help the P.C.A., too.

I think it is a very good thing that we finally have some Paranormals wanting to be super-heroes instead of Rogues. Mister Ragland wanted me to talk about how I feel, and that is how I feel. Some people complain that Vortex is a vigilante but I think that’s a lot better than being a Rogue.