Chapter 5

It wasn’t anything he expected, but Yves had become an international celebrity, of sorts.  Within an hour of his arrival at the ESA offices the morning of his ‘ambush’ interview, Sky News had the story broadcasting, including fifteen seconds of his valiant attempt to deny the discovery.  As Yves was still traveling to work, Ms. Marat, the Sky reporter, had contacted the ESA communication officer, who laughed at the idea of an alien ship when talking to the reporter over the console.  The difference was that he genuinely seemed to think the reporter’s questions were crazy and he plausibly denied that any discovery had occurred.  However, Ms. Marat shared details provided by the “leaker” within the ESA, which had too many facts about the people that might have been called in for a discovery like this, and then the guilty look on Yves’ face when she shared the unedited video with the communication officer, made him realize there may be more information than what he was aware.  He asked her to remain on the link while he went to see if there were any recent reports he was not aware of.  But that was all she needed, and Bernadette Marat’s story was finished and distributed in less than 30 minutes.

About one and one-half hours after the Sky News story was sent out, the ESA communication officer did contact Ms. Marat back, and then she knew she had something good.  After failing to answer her questions directly, Ms. Marat told the communication officer she knew he was lying and threatened to broadcast a full, unedited interview with the internal leaker unless she was able to talk to Yves again.  She was bluffing, because she had received an anonymous tip that night, but the communication officer didn’t know that.  He said staff interviews would be impossible due to work schedule commitments and, besides, he had all the information currently available.  She told him they had five minutes to let her know when and where that day the interview with Yves would take place, or else she would proceed with the “leaker”, and then she disconnected.  Four minutes after that, she was contacted again, and they had set the interview up with Yves in a private ESA executive cafeteria to take place at noon.

Around 11 am, Yves had been pulled out of the collaboration space that had been set up for the satellite analysis and was told he would be giving an interview within an hour.  Yves thought this was to be an internal discussion with senior ESA staff, and was quite surprised when he found out it would be with Sky News again.  Of course he had seen the cast earlier in the morning, once others in the office contacted him and let him know he was online, and asking if there was any truth to what the reporter was saying, he viewed the cast himself.   They had not made him look pathetic, but he still wasn’t pleased to see himself like that.  He tried to get out of it, saying the ESA had staff for this purpose, but they explained how the communication officer had been dismissed by the reporter and he had no choice if he wished to remain on the research team.

That lunch interview lasted fifteen minutes.  Yves had been briefed on what he could and could not disclose, and he himself knew there were limits to what would make sense to talk about and what might be taken out of context, so he was able to reveal just enough to provide some additional level of validity to the story, but not too much to cause concern.  He peppered his answers with a significant amount of the physics of the observations and was actually able to avoid any direct answers to the most alarming questions that Ms. Marat knew when she would be getting no additional useful information.

The edited interview was sent out mid-afternoon, and had reached 50 million views by that evening, with another 10 million views occurring every hour thereafter.  The ESA Communication Director had determined there would be no additional information given out that day, and told anyone who was able to contact their office that a press interview would be held at noon the next day.

And that’s how Yves became an overnight celebrity.

The first two days of his discovery had been hectic, between interviews, additional discoveries and confirmation of the object’s trajectory, but then things calmed a bit as nothing new was occurring.  Yves remembered the “patisserie prevue”, as it was being called.  He felt silly after the interviewer had asked him about any signals that the ship may have been sending, even though he realized in hindsight there wasn’t much likelihood they would have picked up signals close to Jupiter.  ETIOT had its “ears” pointed at the ship on the second day, listening intently.  They heard nothing at first, but then, after the object rounded Mars on the fifth day, the “beeps” started arriving.

…

While Yves was no cryptologist, even he could tell this was Morse code.  But the words made no sense.  The same series of long and short beeps repeated the same message with eighty-one words.  They had European Union translators working with a native language cryptologist to find a the message, but no language made any sense.

And that’s when Hanna arrived.

Hanna Clegg was a former girlfriend of Yves.  He was surprised when her name appeared on his commblock, thinking he had cleared her contact information from his ‘friends and family’ list after they broke up during graduate school studies.  But apparently he hadn’t, since his commblock was set to reject any call except from this “inner circle” of people he was willing to talk to.  Even then, he had let most of the calls go to messages, since he was as tired of explaining the details to his aunts and uncles as he was to the ever-increasing number of ESA, and now European Union, senior officials.  He was going to let this one go to a message as well, except at the last second he clicked on her name to accept the call.

“Bonjour, Hanna.  What brings you to calling me today?” Yves said with clear sarcasm in his voice.

Hanna, who seemed to always be prepared with a response, nonchalantly replied, “Well, I thought you could use my help.”

And with that one sentence, Yves was hooked again.  The instant familiarity, all the fond memories of their time together and the deep conversations they shared, and the impish smile on her pleasant looking face made Yves glad he didn’t let her go to messages.

Hanna was up-front and said she decided to call Yves after seeing him on the casts featuring the noon press conferences.  Yves asked what she had been doing since they had broken apart, and she shared that after receiving her doctorate, she had gotten a job in Brussels as a translator.

“Not exactly in line with your studies, eh?”, Yves teased.

“No, not exactly.  But it kept my human translation skills sharp until the need for my study and training arrived.  And now look who has finally shown up!”, she said.  Hanna had gotten a degree in xenolinguistics.  She had to convince the Chair of the University of Cambridge Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics to allow her doctoral study in a topic no one had done before.  Her argument that Cambridge had astrophysics, astrometallurgy, xenogeology, and even astrobiology, all of which either touched on or were focused upon occurrences of that field of study outside of our solar system.  If there were planets with defined geologic structures and likely plants and animals on them, when why not some of those plants or animals that would have developed languages, she argued.  It not only allowed the Linguistics Chair the opportunity to get additional funding, but also a chance to gain international recognition for the first degree program of its kind.

Hanna had completed her doctorate, successfully defended her thesis, but only barely since the review board had many issues with the subjectivity of the topic.  The attempts by the Linguistics Chair to extend the topic into a degree program were not seriously considered and, in fact, he was replaced as Chair the following year after trying to drum up peer support from colleagues at other Universities to pressure the Cambridge administration to develop the program.  His peers thought the idea silly.

So, after being awarded her doctorate, Hanna got an entry-level translation job with European Commission, Budget and Human Resources department, worked her way into Digital Economy, and currently held a prime position in the Foreign Affairs and Security Policy department.  

Hanna shared this story with Yves with the closing point that it made sense for her to help represent the EU in its dealing with the aliens, and she was uniquely qualified because of her studies and practical experience.  Yves had asked if Hanna was actually calling on behalf of the EU, at which Hanna had to embarrassingly admit she was there on her own.  “I saw you on the various casts, and thought you could help introduce me to some people at ESA,” she said to her former boyfriend, sharing that she had landed at the nearby Nice airport that morning.

Yves knew the struggles they were having decoding the recently received message and gave her this offer.  If she could decode the message, he would fight with all his ability to get her in full time.  Hanna agreed.

It was much easier than Yves had thought, since the ESA Planetary Senior Director was extremely stressed and nervous they were not going to decode the message in time before agencies from other countries and international cooperatives broadcast the contents.  He listened to the description of Hanna’s qualification, had a brief background check performed and, largely on the fact that she was the only xenolinguist he could identify, had her brought into the building, sign the non-disclosure forms, and join the team.  Whether by luck or skill, or just because someone new looks at the problem from a different perspective, once Hanna saw the various details the others had been pouring over, it took her 10 minutes to recognize the message.

“It’s one word, repeated over and over.  ‘Safe’.,” she told the staff gathered around her.

“But it’s not repeated over and over again.  Well, not without a number of other words in the message that you haven’t accounted for,” retorted the lead Belgian translator.

Hanna explained, “You are all accustomed to translating from one language to another.  This message isn’t for one language.  It’s for all languages – or at least 81 different languages.  I recognized the word ‘safe’ in 6 of the top 20, and was able to translate another two by converting the codes into letters I recognize.  I’m guessing that if you find someone that knows Morse code for some non-Latin letters, you’ll find the word ‘safe’ in those other places as well.”

It took another five minutes for the first and fourth ‘words’ to be translated into Mandarin Chinese and Hindi, respectively, primarily because it took some time to find a Chinese-to-Morse Code converter.  Both words spelled ‘safe’ in the appropriate language, and the team was astounded.  There was a cheer that went up in the room, with people coming over to give Hanna hand-shakes, hugs and kisses for solving the mystery.  There was then a race to finish the translation into the remaining languages, which took another five hours in total, since it was difficult to track down the Morse code patterns for some of the languages lower on the list.  It was within the first 15 minutes that the Polish translator and cryptologist pair determined the languages were ordered by number of speakers, greatest to least.  Why 81 languages, someone else asked?  The common guess was this represented 80% of the world’s population, and any remaining languages only added a small number.  And besides, it was hard to find any of the remaining languages that actually had a Morse code set for their character set.

While the fun of completing the translation was going on, a smaller set of people had been pulled into a side conference room to discuss the meaning of the word and, equally importantly, what response to send back.  Hanna was invited into the room when they started pulling people out of the main collaboration area with all of the action.  Yves saw her leave the space, and felt a not small amount of jealousy arise.  But five minutes later, one of the staff assistants came out to find him and invited him to join the discussion.  When he entered, Hanna came over, gave him a big hug, and said in his ear, “I asked that they bring you into our chat, since you were such a big help getting me in here today.” followed by a kiss on the cheek.  Yves swallowed his words as he watched Hanna walk back across the room to a center seat at the conference table, thinking there would be time to sort this out later.  But that time didn’t really occur.

The self-assuredness that initially attracted Yves to her during their graduate studies took center stage, and Hanna ‘informed’ the ESA team that the aliens were starting simple and would work their way to more complex thoughts.  It was agreed that starting with ‘Hello’ as the reply would make the most sense.  So, at the end of the day on 20 April, ESA had one of their custom-controlled communication satellites use a directional signal pointed to the object and began transmitting ‘Hello’ in the same 81 languages and in the same order that the craft had used for its first message.

It took an hour for any impact to be noticed.  Back in the main collaboration space, the team calculated twelve minutes for the outbound signal, which meant twelve minutes for any reply to make it back.  The remaining thirty-six minutes were full of anticipation and hushed conversations in the collaboration space.  And then,… nothing.  The signal that had been transmitting one word for the past seven hours went silent.

The team panicked.  Some, including the Belgian translator, blamed Hanna for a bad translation and argued she should be kicked out of the building and let them return to their analysis for a new message.  Others thought the translation was fine, but the craft had simply received confirmation there was sufficient intelligence on the planet and now it was going to proceed with its next task – whether good, bad or neutral.  Hanna didn’t bother trying to convince either group.  Instead, she went to ESA General Director Brożek and began a calm conversation with her, which was soon joined by the Planetary Senior Director and finally by Jorge de Prieto, Director of Exoplanetary Studies.

Mr. Prieto then shouted out “Quiet, please!” to bring the room under control, and he turned to the General Director.

Director Brożek spoke “We all know this is uncharted territory we are working in, so there is no need for panic like we are seeing in this room now.  Panic will get us nowhere, and will simply keep us in the dark when it is our job to bring a clear vision to the world of what is happening.”  This seemed to help the situation, as she could see people’s shoulders relax and the concern on some faces be replaced with a nod agreement to what she was saying.

The General Director continued, “I’ve consulted with Senior Director Guidetti and Director Prieto and we’ve asked Hanna Clegg to head the efforts related to transmission translation and message content creation for continued communication efforts with Object 2091-04-161000b.  Hanna’s training in the field of xenolinguistics and her extensive translation experience with various European Commission organizations, combined with the quick success she had understanding the first message, have shown her uniquely qualified for this role.  Hanna will report directly to me, and will be responsible for assembling the team to focus on these efforts.  She also has a suggestion for what is happening at this time, and an idea on the next step in our communication with the object, which I fully support.”  The Director turned to the newest face in the room and passed control of the room by saying “Hanna?”

As if working from a script they had prepared, Hanna started up with hardly a pause.  “Thank you, General Director Brożek.  I appreciate the confidence that you, Senior Director Guidetti and Director Prieto have placed in me,” she said as she looked at each of the senior staff.  Then she turned to the rest of the room.  “I believe the object has one of two purposes.  It is either an observation vessel looking for active intelligence on our planet, or is a craft carrying beings from another place in our universe.  The best way to confirm this is to send a message of our own positive intent as we would to a fellow human being.  By now transmitting “Welcome” to the craft, we will be letting it know we are glad of its arrival.  If the craft responds with a message containing an emotional aspect, then there are beings aboard.  If the craft continues in silence, then it is an unmanned observation craft.  Anyone thinking the craft has ill intentions for Earth would best observe any natural creature that comes upon its prey.  The creature does not announce its presence before the attack,” Hanna explained as her gaze just happened to settle upon the Belgian translator.  “So let’s send the “Welcome” message and I’m confident we’ll have an answer within the next hour,” she finished.

The translation teams began converting into Morse code.  Soon, however, there were different raised voices popping up across the collaboration space as the duos responsible for some of the less familiar languages argued if a particular translation was a pleasant greeting or a response to “Thank you!”.  After a few minutes discussion, Hanna made the decision to limit this response to just the twenty-eight official languages of the European Parliament.  The message was sent, with another known waiting period for transmission to and from the craft, during which many people took a break from the tense atmosphere in the collaboration space.  But by the time the twenty-four minutes had passed, the room was full again, with eyes on the wall screen displaying the signal received from the direction of the craft.

The thirty-minute mark came and went with no response.  After thirty-five minutes, the whispers started up.  At forty-minutes even General Director Brożek began to look doubtful and was having another sidebar conversation with Directors Guidetti and Prieto, but this time without Hanna being included.  Then, at the forty-three minute and seventeen second mark, the beeping began again.

beeeep beep beep beeeep pause beeeep beep pause beeeep beeeep pause beep beep beeeep pause beep pause beeeep beep beeeep 

beep beep beep beep pause beep beeeep pause beep beeeep beep beeeep pause beep beeeep beep beeeep pause beeep beep beeep beeep

beep beep beep beep pause beep pause beep beep beeeep pause beep beeep beep pause beep pause beep beep beeeep pause beeep beep beeep beeep

…

In the few hours since the first message was decoded, the software designers in the group had worked with the translators to develop a real-time Morse code converter that would display the results in multiple languages simultaneously.  It was set to determine the single word by narrowing down matches from different languages.  It only took for the halfway through the second word for the options to be narrowed down that finally displayed “happy” once the second word was completed.

Director Prieto looked at the Polish translation duo and said “Double check the results, please.”

As they did, the Morse code coming in continued to say “happy”, in the same order of languages they had sent out earlier that hour.  And, almost as if it were a command, there were a few audible sighs of relief in the room.

Hanna started gathering people to talk about how the conversation should be structured when someone shouted from the middle of the collaboration space, saying, “I think all of you need to see this!” and sent the display from his console to the main wall screen.

A familiar white, blue and red logo appeared, then shrunk to half the screen with the other half filled with the pleasant face of an announcer.

“The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration is excited to announce the discovery of two additional objects, 2091-04-210008 and 2091-04-210014.”  The half of the screen with the logo switched to a graphic showing three dots in a field of black, with Mars and Earth in orbit around the sun.  “Both of these objects have been confirmed to be following the same trajectory as Object 2091-04-161000b, also known as the “Spring Surprise.”  These two objects also have the same apparent size, shape and flight plan as what appears to be the lead craft of the three.  The new objects were discovered shortly after 2 PM local time by the Mauna Kea Observatory complex in Hawaii,…” the announcer’s voice continued as the room went silent, except for the frantic sounds of two of the ESA planetary observers bringing up data automatically collected by the ETIOT satellites and telescopes.  They had confirmed the findings of their NASA counterparts by the time the NASA broadcast had finished and were showing the results to Senior Director Guidetti, who rushed over as soon as she noticed what was happening.

As Directory Guidetti was sharing the details with her boss, Martyna Brożek’s commblock lit up.  She had a surprised look on her face, looked around, and stepped out of the collaboration space area as she answered the call.

About ten minutes later, the commblocks of other senior staff lit up, and they likewise stepped out of the large room.  Within a few minutes after that, they all re-appeared, and attention focused on Director Brożek.  She didn’t have to call the room to attention, as everyone was already waiting to hear what she was going to say.

“Based on the recent discoveries,” the Director said, with a displeased glance towards Director Guidetti, who was looking somewhat nauseous and staring straight at the floor, “a decision has been made to split our work into two separate teams.  The Planetary Observation team will be moving to a new collaboration area and will begin reporting directly to the EU Secretariat of Security and Foreign Affairs.  They will focus on monitoring the flight path of the objects, determining whether the objects will pass by our planet, enter into order around either the Moon or Earth, or on a path for direct entry into Earth’s atmosphere.  This includes maintaining an updated schedule of when each of these events could occur.  Director Guidetti will provide instructions on the new location where the Observation team will continue their work.”

“The Communication Team will remain here, determine if any of the new objects are transmitting messages, and continue a dialogue with any of the objects that are able to communicate with us.  Since we are well past midnight, and many people have not gotten any rest in the past 14 hours, I’d like to ask that anyone not deemed part of the core staff at this time go home and rest.  We need to consult with our various member countries before a comprehensive communication plan is established.  We will reconvene at 10 am.”  And with that, Yves, Hanna and 80% of the rest of those in the large room were sent home for a few hours.

As people were waiting outside the building for their transpods to arrive, Yves noticed Hanna standing off to the side, looking unusually lost.  He approached her and asked, “Do you have a place to go?”

“No,” she replied, looking at Yves but not really focusing on him.  “I came straight to see you after I arrived at the airport.  I hadn’t imagined things would happen quite so fast.”

“Then you can stay at my place tonight,” he said.  She looked at him, eyes clearing a bit.  “I have an extra room,” he said quickly.

Five hours later, after some sleep, a quick breakfast from the food Yves had in his kitchen, and a brief shower to start the day fresh, Yves had ordered a transpod and they both were watching for it from his second-floor apartment.  They didn’t feel like being outside, waiting in the open.

“Has it been like this the whole time?” Hanna asked.

“Ehhh, sometimes yes, sometimes no,” Yves replied.  “The days when new things are being discovered seem to be over almost as soon as I arrive.  The days when nothing new is occurring except for the blinking light on the wall screen moving slowly towards Earth, those days seem to stretch out forever.  But you, Hanna,” he said with a smile, looking at her, “you have a way of picking the best.  No day was exactly like yesterday.”

And Hanna’s face brightened, the first time she had returned his smile since she was put in charge of the translation efforts.

They quickly hopped in the transpod when it arrived and went straight to the ESA offices.  No spur-of-the-moment pastry shopping today.  

Both Hanna and Yves had agreed to arrive early, and at 8:30 am, the activity level was picking up around the ESA facilities, especially for a Saturday, as others had the same thoughts. The two teams, Communication and Observation, were both housed in the same building today, but on different floors.  The two former lovers split apart to go to their separate areas, both wishing they could be near the other for the comfort of having someone you know well nearby when the unexpected occurs.

Yves asked for a status update upon his arrival at the newly formed Communication Control Center.  They had taken over the Executive Conference Room on the top floor, so the furniture was definitely more comfortable than the collaboration space they had been in most of the past week.  No new objects had appeared since they left the night before.  The real-time data collection from the ETIOT network was being fully reviewed by two separate sub-teams at ESA, as well as by a group of military personnel in the EU Security and Foreign Affairs headquarters in Stuttgart.  There would be no chance of undiscovered new objects as far as Europe was concerned.

In the Communication Team collaboration space, there had been no change in the message coming back from the object since they had gone home six hours before.  Hanna started working on various conversation plans to present to her when she saw next.  About 3 minutes before 10 am, Director Brożek arrived in the collaboration space.  She gave a friendly nod to Hanna when she saw her, but didn’t seek her out for any advance briefing before her conversation with the team.  At 10 am sharp, the Director got everyone’s attention and began her update.

“After consultation with our member states, the decision has been made to attempt to establish an ongoing conversation with the craft, initially focused on determining their purpose and plans for interaction with Earth.  The Observation team will be able to track all three objects and provide alerts if the current trajectory changes with any significance.  Our job is to know what will happen when the objects arrive at Earth.  After establishing the plans for each of the craft, we are to engage in a continuing conversation to learn of the origin, history, culture, technology and other key information that can help us understand their intent, as well as their possible reactions to our own activity.  We will be reviewing each message with the EU Security and Foreign Affairs headquarters before transmission, sharing each message with them upon its arrival, and establishing a live-link with EUSFA HQ if there are any significant messages.”

Hanna sighed, but wasn’t surprised at the instructions Director Brożek continued to share.  She worked with the EU Security hierarchy that the Director was talking about, and she knew their tendency to take control whenever they could, based upon security concerns.

But the work wasn’t as easy as the instructions.  Hanna was able to work up from single words to simple sentences within a couple of hours.  But any attempt to get answers to any of their questions came back with one of two responses: “We are safe.” and “We want to help.”

Another series of questions about the help they could provide finally produced a longer message.  “We can help you with the health of your planet.”

The questions from the Communication team then began focusing on how the alien craft would be able to help the planet.  Did they have technology to share?  Did they have instructions to show them?  The responses from the craft had slowed later in the afternoon.  Eventually, after an hour-long series of questions from Earth without answers, the following response was received – “We are safe and we are here to return your planet to good health.  We will be able to explain more after we land.” and then radio silence the rest of the day.

By 10 pm, after five hours of no additional responses from the alien craft despite continued questions from the Communication Team, Director Brożek sent the extended team home for a short rest, to return at 6 am the next morning.  Hanna was able to stay at Yves’ apartment for a second night.  Yves was at work with the Observation Team until after midnight.  The lead ship was now estimated to be 12 hours from arrival, with the deceleration making it look like the ship would either go into orbit or enter Earth’s atmosphere.  Yves was told to also go home and rest but return by 7 am the next morning.

When they returned to the ESA offices, both Yves and Hanna found things pretty much the same as they had left.  The objects all closer to Earth with no additional messages arriving.  With approximately three hours til arrival, the Communication Team shifted to understanding the arrival location.  Still no response from the ships.

With the arrival imminent, and no messages from the craft, attention fully shifted to the Observation Team.  At this point, an agreement had been reached with the major space agencies operating around the globe.  They would share real-time tracking data so there would be immediate knowledge of where the craft would be landing.

Then it happened – the lead craft entered into an orbital path around Earth.  After it completed a few orbits, a smaller craft was released from it and quickly – much more quickly than anything any of the space agencies or national armed forces expected – the landing craft broke through the atmosphere above the north-west of Canada and followed a trajectory towards the center of the United States.

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