Chapter 1
Earth: Week -1
Sophia-Antipolis,
France April 16, 2091
09h14m, CET, Monday
The female avatar pulled the Odyssey DFX-7 Double-Wide putter from her bag, looked at the layout in front of her and stepped onto the green.
The man wearing the VR glasses simulated the steps as he walked his avatar towards the ball lying fifteen meters from the hole. “Focus”, he told himself. “Forget about Fiona O’Reardon and her stupid opinions. If she doesn’t appreciate my contributions, then screw it. The whole Sub-Planetary Observation Directorate can go to hell if they don’t recognize talent in front of them. And the same for that lady at the bistro last night. Who did she think she was fooling with that line about taking a break from men for the present time? Well, she was the one missing out on an opportunity. As for me, I am not going to miss out on this opportunity.”
The man paused, looked over his shoulder, and then continued his internal dialogue. “Stop it! You are psyching yourself out. No one cares if you are male or female in real life. All they care about is if you will sink this putt or not. And if you do, you move into Third Place at the St. Rule Trophy tournament with only the 18th hole of the Old Course remaining between you and some well-deserved prize money!”
The man paused, looked around his real-world office space to confirm no one was watching him playing virtual golf, and then got his stance ready in front of his virtual ball.
He pulled his arms back, swung them forward and … his swing was interrupted by a software alarm sounding. His putt not only went wide to the left, but it rolled completely off the green and into the rough. “Zut!”, he mumbled, as he tapped on the goggles to bring up his local data display.
‘Earth-Transit Interplanetary Object Tracker’ shown across the top of the display in a muted gray font. “Unanticipated Object,” was the warning message near a portion of the image on the display, with a very-small dot of light circled to the upper right of the screen.
The man clicked on the dot of light, which opened a pop-up window with “ETIOT Satellite 82: Alert Time: 09 h 15 m” and then data tags streaming across the bottom of the display, out between the space representing the orbits of Mars and Jupiter on the screen.
“Must be a rogue chunk of an outer Jovian ring that caught the telescope’s attention,” the man thought to himself.” He tapped the “Snooze / Reassess” option on the screen to have ETIOT Satellite check again this portion of space in five minutes, and then clicked on the side of the display where “Yves Al-Battani VS 7” was showing to return him to the tournament.
The other virtual golfers in Yves’ group had to finish their putts. The two after him had to chip onto the green and both had their balls blown well off the desired trajectory, because a sudden wind had come up. With his ball being the closest to the hole, Yves was the last to putt again. And because of the virtual wind, the other three in the group were each waiting for a ‘calm’ point for their turn. The five-minute ‘snooze’ passed before Yves’ turn arrived, and when the satellite alarm sounded again, he knew he had to address the warning or risk getting a call from his supervisor for ignoring the alert. The European Space Agency protocol on proper alert response was one of many bureaucratic policies that was best not to ignore.
“First things first” Yves said to himself. “Let’s check the object’s trajectory to see if the tracking algorithm has it confused with a known object.” Yves brought up the numbers and immediately frowned. “No object moves that fast to be anything in our solar system.”
Yves opened his contact list and tapped the name”Lorentz Meyer”.
“Yes, Poodle, what do you want?”, teased Lorentz.
“Your software is leaking like a fatty German sausage – – – again,” Yves replied.
“You’ve known me for five years and you are still trying to find a problem in my code. My software is fine,” Lorentz returned, “It’s your brain that is leaky.”
Yves passed him the data file and said, “Nothing moves that fast,” and then with a smile, “except that girl you tried to pick up at Antibes last weekend.”
“Hmph,” was the only response from Lorentz as he dropped the connection.
Yves knew him well enough that he would hear back as soon as Lorentz found the problem in his software.
It took fifteen minutes for Lorentz to tap back, which was a surprise for Yves, since he typically found the problem (or how to prove the other person wrong) in much less time.
“OK, Yves, you’ve tripped over something special this time,” Lorentz said excitedly. “Check your object again.”
Yves asked the satellite tracker to bring up the current location of his golf-interrupting, alert-generating rock, and looked at the data with disbelief.
“This is impossible!”, Yves sputtered, “It indicates the object has traveled 450,000 kilometers in the twenty minutes since it was first spotted by the telescopes. Like I said, nothing moves this fast!”
“I’ll look over the logic again, but you’d better check on what’s happening with that object in more detail, my French friend, so you know what answers to give when Christensen calls you.” Lorentz said.
“Is he the Monitoring Supervisor today,” Yves asked.
“Yes, he is, and you know he won’t let time pass before he has the opportunity to bother the Tracker on Duty and state that you aren’t performing your job because you didn’t call him about a ‘unique finding’.,” Lorentz responded.
It was less than another fifteen minutes later when Yves saw the tap arrive – “Henning Christensen” popped on the screen. “Hello, Henning,” Yves happily responded upon answering the tap.
This threw the Dane off his path a bit. “Well, uh, hello Yves,” Christensen responded, almost with a friendly smile. “I received a warning alert…”, but before he could finish his sentence, Yves interrupted.
“Yes, this is the most interesting object I think I’ve ever seen, Henning. Why don’t you come over and I’ll show you the full spectrum view. I know we could have this conversation desk-to-desk, but I think an in-person, full-spectrum view is best in this situation,” Yves said out loud, while thinking to himself ‘Plus, this will give me another ten minutes to pull all the analysis together, since you’ll have to make your way from Building 10 to Building 26.’
Once Christensen arrived, Yves had nearly an hour’s worth of results to show. “The object was first spotted at around 210 million kilometers distance from earth at 10h00 GMT. 10h20, the object had covered approximately 450,000 km. Over the next 40 minutes, the object covered another 800,000 km. We don’t have a mass or relative size of the object yet, since ETIOT hasn’t been able to get a clear enough assessment from any of the satellite measurements yet, but two main data points make this exceptionally unique. First, the object is slowing down. The average speed per 5 minute interval shows a 0.018% reduction between the first two intervals, a 0.017% reduction between the third and fifth intervals, and a 0.016% further reduction between the sixth and eleventh interval.
“Second, the object’s trajectory is an arc, not a line. It’s hard to predict the exact angle of the arc yet, but,” Yves paused from pointing at the results on the display and looked at Christensen to see his reaction, “it seems to be angling closer towards Mars. But the angle of arrival on Mars could, with the proper deceleration techniques, put it on a trajectory towards a closer and much more personal planet.” He let this sink in, as Christensen continued reviewing the measurement points, graphics, and continued live data streaming coming in.
It took a full ten seconds for Christensen to register what Yves was saying. “You said the arc is heading where?”, he asked, turning to face Yves.
“Towards Earth, I predict,” Yves repeated.
“This is impossible!”, Christensen said, echoing Yves’s own response from forty-minutes prior.
“Yes, it is,” Yves agreed. “Now give me your authorization to point some more gear at this object to prove me wrong. Or, perhaps, to make us the discoverers of the most exciting thing in solar system exploration in 100 years!”
10 h 10 m, CET, Monday
Yves clicked the contact list on the console, and tapped the video icon next to “Schmenk, Lorentz”.
The call screen opened with Lorentz’s face leaning into the lens. “What in the hell is happening, Yves! I’m seeing override requests for two of the Mars-orbit telescopes to be re-oriented.”
Yves could not contain his smile. “So I hoped I could appeal to Christensen’s ego, and it worked! I told him if he gave me authorization, we could be the most famous astronomers of this decade. The two Mars-orbit telescopes will be reoriented and measuring various aspects of Object 2091-04-161000b. That’s our baby, Lorentz! That’s the new asteroid that was registered a half-second before I received his initial alert. Anyway, I’m also working to get Copernicus 7 to analyze it. That takes a bit longer to orient the mirrors. Anyway, I think Christensen is going to ask you to help with some custom analysis and I wanted to give you …”
“One moment, Yves,” Lorentz said, and placed his friend on hold.
After a minute, Lorentz’s image returned. “You need to react a bit faster, friend. That was Christensen. He didn’t ask. He told me I’m reassigned, and I’m supposed to ask you for direction. Like you know how to direct a Software Specialist Level III! Don’t let this go to your head, Poodle. And what am I supposed to do about…”
Lorentz’s mini-tirade was interrupted by an ‘Urgent Call Request’ on the console of both Lorentz and Yves.
“A request from Brożek?”, Lorentz exclaimed. “What craziness did you unleash, Yves!”
22 h 40 m, CET, Monday
Yves sent a message to his friend. “Have the Software Test Engineering certifications been received?”
“Go away,” Lorentz responded after a minute. “I just got in my Pod and will be showering and going to bed as soon as I get home. My brain is spent.”
“But we’ve got so much more to learn!” replied Yves.
Lorentz was staccato-style, sentence by sentence.
“It’s been eleven hours since Christensen asked me to help you.”
“And he had brought in three other planetary techs, one other software engineer, the ESA Mars Unit Director, the Planetary Senior Director, and tap-linked ESA Director General herself, Martyna Brożek!”
“The Planetary Senior Director made everyone consent to a non-disclosure addendum that was added to our employee profile. I won’t talk about this discovery or the work with anyone outside of the authorized work group.”
“The object hasn’t changed trajectory in the entire time we’ve been watching and it’s still headed this way.”
“I’m tired after a double-shift at the office, the object is still more than two days distant from arriving at Mars, the visuals are nowhere close to being available, and there is still too much interference from the asteroid traffic, so stop bothering me and go home.”
Yves paused, and then replied, “Yes, I suppose it is a good time to rest a bit. Sorry to bother you again. We’ll talk soon!”
He got not reply.
07 h 17 m, CET, Tuesday
The next morning, Yves awoke sooner than he thought he would, too excited and nervous about missing some new development at the office. He quickly showered and dressed and decided he needed to bring in some special bakery items to celebrate the finding. If anyone asked him why, he would lie and say it was in honor of the forming of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. “We should recognize the history of how the European Union came to be.” “Very interesting, the memories that stick with a person“, Yves thought to himself as he walked into the patisserie.
On the way out of the shop, as he waited for his transpod to swing back around to pick him up, he was approached by someone with a “Sky News” vest. “Good morning,” said the reporter, a pretty, brunette with a Pyrenees accent, one of the few places in France able to retain a bit of unique sound. “My name is Bernadette Marat. I understand you work at the European Space Agency, is that correct?”
Yves looked around, waiting for his ride to re-appear. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we’ve met before,” Yves said in as polite a voice as he could find.
“That’s correct, we haven’t. But I believe you’ll be glad we did meet this morning, since it will give you a chance to share the story I’m sure you’re bursting to tell,” the reporter continued. “We’ve learned that there is a unique object that ESA has been tracking for the past day, and this object appears to be unlike anything observed before.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything you’re talking about,” Yves lied.
The reporter smiled and looked at the photo ID badge hanging from his belt. Yves quickly unclipped the ID and tucked it into his pants pocket. “Can you confirm the path the object is taking? And the source where it came from?”, Bernadette continued.
“We’re not authorized to speak of any work matters,” Yves blurted out. Zut!, he thought, why didn’t I just stay quiet.
“Will the object reach Earth, Dr. Al-Battani?” His transpod came around the corner, and Yves walked towards the curb. Ms. Marat stood in his way, pointing the recorder at his face. “Is the object part of any secret project from China, Brazil, or the United States?” Yves had to shoulder his way past the reporter to get in his vehicle. “What signals or messages are being broadcast by the object?” At this last question, Yves’ head snapped up and looked straight into the recorder with wide eyes. Why aren’t we listening for anything?, he thought as he mentally smacked his hand on his forehead in sudden realization.