Ciao, SETI! Part 8/8
The Dark Forest
If you have just joined us in this story, by the way, you may wish to avoid spoilers by starting at the beginning, which you can find at that link there.
So, here we are, finally, at the end. This is the original ending, which is the version which would be included in my collection called Immigration Control. You already have a few stories from that collection, by the way. It includes D-Zero Meson Oscillation, and Shipyard Ahoy! is also in it. I am minded to give you the sort-of-prologue to it for Event Day on Saturday. Then possibly the second (or first, rather) story, but then say you’d have to go paid to read the rest of them. Those free ones together amount to a good 50k words, and there’s another 50k after that. So I think that’s only fair.
This ending is harsher than the alternate ending. The alt.end is perhaps more in keeping with certain later character traits, if I can be cryptic like that. But I do like this version, so I am sticking with it. The alt.end would be from the American Visidramas collection which is where you would find all the Unofficial Katy stories (plus some others, the ones she wrote herself, if I can permit myself some postmodernism; which I most assuredly can).
Which of the endings I personally prefer depends largely on what mood I’m in. If I am feeling angry and sad at the world, then it’s this version. If I’m in a more upbeat, mischievous mood, then it’s the alternate ending.
Anyhow, I shall make no further comment at this juncture. I’ll do some more commentary though to accompany the alternate ending when I post that for you tomorrow.
So then, in the previous episode, we finally got to hear the ETI’s message to humanity, as the bad guys tried to chase our heroes halfway round the world, and the sinister Alex decided that Unofficial Katy was not particularly compatible with this world after all. Still, she did tell him she wanted to go home, so perhaps he’s not all bad after all. Last time we saw her, she was about to be escorted from the prison in the back of a van. To what fate, well, now we get to find out.
So in this final episode, well, it’s the final episode isn’t it. That means everything is supposed to get resolved. Hmm, we’ll see about that.
After we find out what the Great Image Generator thinks of it all, naturally.
“Am I allowed to get out of this dork outfit now?”
Phoebe laughed. “Sure. And there are beers in the fridge. So make yourself at home. Watch a movie or something.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
Phoebe’s colleague came in and plonked some kit down on the table. Car keys, tracking device. Two 9mm semi-automatics.
“I presume you’d rather stay here than risk getting shot? It’s not pretty out there.”
“Erm, yeah, ok. I’ll watch a movie, like you say.”
Phoebe smiled slyly at him. She was dead sexy when she did that, Bryn thought.
“You know I really, really wish you didn’t bat for the other team.”
“Are you talking spy stuff, or bedroom stuff?”
“The latter.”
“Ah,” she threw him another sly smile. “Well,” she said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Whatever made you assume I don’t swing both ways?”
“Oh?” Bryn’s eyes clearly lit up.
“Later. First, I have to go visit someone.”
They drove north out of the city and into the countryside. Katy meditated the whole way. She was not unhappy. She had wanted to go home all her life.
After about an hour they took a detour, into the woods, dark and deep, little more than a farm track, barely used anymore. Katy could feel the road surface change.
And then they stopped. They came around to the back, both of them, and opened up the door and unhooked her from the bench. She went willingly.
“So you’re not going to give us any trouble, then?”
She smiled. “Just make it quick. I have promises to keep.”
“There!” Phoebe frantically pointed at some dirt track leading off the B-road. She didn’t give him much warning but Dmitri was the kind of professional who wasn’t in the habit of panicking. A sudden handbrake turn, a little screech, a burst of gas and some revs and that was all she wrote.
He flicked up the headlights. Phoebe strained her eyes. Human eyes. Not as good as the ones she would normally be used to, one has to say.
Then they suddenly rounded a corner and screeched to a halt.
There were lights up ahead. Faint, red, rear lights.
Phoebe leaped out the car. And hoped she’d still have time to say goodbye.
They knelt her down by the side of the track. She glanced up and took one last look into the beautiful, dark forest, and closed her eyes. The air was fresh and cool and still. The life deep amongst those trees would continue, she knew. It reminded her of home, all those beautiful forests, those warm lakes, the twin suns.
A different place. A different time-zone. Home.
And that’s when the shots rang out. Smothering the forest in a resonant echo.
Gone one, dead second.
The creatures of the night heard them. If you were there you would’ve felt them too, cracking and breaking for more than just a few seconds deep into the trees.
But Katy did not die.
She opened her eyes and saw the two of them, lying on the ground, still and gone.
And then Phoebe appeared. Katy stood up and faced her, and then sighed.
“You didn’t need to do that.”
“Yes, I did.” Phoebe retrieved a set of keys from one of the bodies and undid Katy’s restraints. “They would’ve hurt you.”
“Like they did to your father. Because he was protecting you.”
Phoebe threw the keys away angrily and stood to face her. “From them. I hate this species. They hurt everything.”
“They’re young, and scared.”
“That’s no excuse. We never hurt each other when we were young.”
Katy looked beyond Phoebe and stared distantly into the forest. Then focussed back at her. “No, you’re right,” she accepted, “that’s true. Most species don’t hurt each other when they’re young.”
“They hurt this beautiful planet. Our second homeworld. Danuih looked after us, after our sun died, remember? It’s our duty to protect her.”
Katy knew that too. She did remember. And then she cried. “But I was ready to go home. I wanted to go home.”
Phoebe stood in front of her and looked longingly. “I don’t want you to go. I need you.”
“No, you don’t. I think you just proved that.”
“You know what I mean. Please don’t leave me alone. Please. You’re the only family I have now.”
Then she started to cry too.
Katy looked down through her own tears, and understood. A few silent moments passed, and then she looked up again, up through the trees and into the breaks in the canopy, at those beautiful stars in a beautiful clear sky.
Perhaps those stars could wait.
Then she felt into the woods again, she looked over Phoebe’s shoulder, she looked into the darkness and knew that deep in there all those myriad lifeforms were just going about their nocturnal business, as they had done since long before your species even existed and will do long after you’re all gone, as they did every night and for all the nights to come. Oblivious to you humans who would threaten their peace, their dark forest.
“Please, don’t go,” Phoebe didn’t plead, she just asked gently. “I don’t want to be alone. Please stay.”
And then Katy looked longingly at her, as if remembering the first time she ever saw this world. “It is a beautiful planet, isn’t it? This place?”
Phoebe brushed her tears away and nodded softly. “Yes. I’ve always thought so.”
And then Katy smiled. “Then I’ll stay. With you. I probably should stick around anyway, see what happens next? It is why I’m here, after all, isn’t it? To observe and record things?”
Phoebe laughed through her tears and leapt forward to embrace her. “We’re a family. My family. And we always will be. And whatever humans might think, this is our home now.”
“True,” Katy held her tight and kissed her hair. “Always true.” Then she pulled back, tilted her head a little and smiled, slyly. “And maybe I should do a little exo-diplomacy on the side, eh?”
And then they both laughed, and held each other together in the warmest embrace, like the family they truly were, and always had been, in a different place.
In a different time-zone. 120 million years ago, on the other side of the galaxy.
When the Pleiades were nothing but a swirling, gorgeous nebula.
A cosmic nursery.
And maybe that’s where all of you come from. Maybe we’re the natives, and you’re the real Visitors here.
The intruders…
As the Secretary General of the United Nations, on behalf of the General Assembly of the peoples of this world, we formally acknowledge the authenticity of this signal. We have bypassed the Security Council and voted with significant majority to accept this message. And its contents.
The General Assembly has also voted, with significant majorities, on many other issues.
First, we recognise the legitimacy of the revolutionary government of Britannia, and formally welcome them into the family of nations.
Second, we condemn, without reservation, the belligerence of the United States of America towards Russia and China, supposedly their fellow two members of the Security Council, who have shown no intention of threatening America whatsoever. We call on America to cease hostilities immediately. We do not ask, we demand, that the President attends the summit meeting we have arranged for next week with his opposite numbers from Russia and China. We urge them all, in no uncertain terms, to agree to sign the non-aggression treaty we will prepare in the meantime for that occasion.
We also demand, without reservation, the immediate decommissioning of every nuclear weapon on this beautiful planet.
We demand an end to deforestation and pollution and industrial agriculture, with immediate effect. We demand an end to post-colonial exploitation, with immediate effect.
And we cancel all third world debt, with immediate effect.
They are watching us.
And they have judged us. And not unfairly.
But we wish to extend this welcome. To all the Visitors. They will be granted the same rights and responsibilities as all citizens of our planet should enjoy, according to our own declaration of human rights. As the Secretary General of the United Nations, our own family, we offer this hand of friendship.
Perhaps if we work together, as a family, to heal the divisions in our world, to celebrate our cultural differences, to right the wrongs that have hurt our family, to bring an end to injustice and inequity and conflict, and to heal the damage to our beautiful environment, perhaps then, our hopes of one day joining a community of galactic civilisations may be realised.
We are not alone, people of the world.
Time to get used to it, I think?
We are not alone, anymore…
Amidst the hubbub and babble and toil and trouble of the convention, Katy sits behind a long trestle table with an illusion of authors, an oasis of calm in a sea of disorder and fantasy.
She speaks the words as she scribbles them in the front of her new book, Alt.contact, “To J.L., with everlasting gratitude.” And then she autographs it, and hands it back up to the handsome, elegantly dressed woman with the warm smile standing opposite.
“Thanks! See you later?”
Katy returns the smile and nods. “I will definitely need a drink after this. So yes.”
The next girl in the queue comes forward and hands over her own copy. Katy looks up at her, curiously, as if with a distant sense of recognition, a beautiful young woman with brilliant blue eyes, like the Pleiades.
And softly spoken, with a New England accent. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Hypergates must take a lot of energy to maintain, I suppose?”
Katy laughs. “Sure.”
“Do you know how much?”
“No idea. I’m an exo-psychologist, not an engineer, so don’t ask me. Why do you ask?”
Phoebe chuckles. “I was just wondering if you think flare stars could be harnessed for that energy?”
“Definitely.”
“I’m just starting a thesis on them, looking for patterns in the energy output. And trying to convince SETI to take it seriously.”
“Well, I wish you the best of luck with SETI. You’ll need it. So have you noticed any patterns yet?”
“I think so, yes. With Barnard’s Star. Although the flares don’t happen at regular intervals, I’ve found it’s possible to take any sequence of eleven, as long as the start of each sequence is separated by seven flares, and the total amount of energy over each sequence is the same to plus or minus five percent.”
“Eleven and seven, huh.” Katy leaned back in her chair and pondered it for a moment. Then she said, “Try taking more than one flare star, like Proxima perhaps, and doubling it to twenty-two, but keep the seven separation. I think that might eliminate your plus or minus five percent.”
Phoebe’s eyes lit up. “Twenty-two over seven?”
Katy smiled. And Phoebe laughed joyfully.
And so Katy opened her book and wrote inside the front cover, “To Cousin Phoebe, with love and courage and good fortune for the better things to come. Katy Major. Unofficial.”
And then, as an afterthought, she added, “Ciao, SETI!”
Then she smiles warmly up at Phoebe in a distinctly familial way, closes the book, and hands it back to her with a knowing, conspiratorial wink.
And Phoebe’s heart is home again.
And not alone anymore…
Unofficial Katy will return…
If you can’t wait that long, here’s the alternate ending…
And if you are going through the Immigration Control setlist, then the next story you want is Fortunately, I was saved by the Aliens, which you can read there. Ironically, that’s where Unofficial Katy was conceived. Having read this one, you’ll understand why immediately…