Ciao, SETI! Part 8/8 - Alternate Ending
A New Beginning
Well, I hope you enjoyed the original version of the ending. Perhaps you will enjoy this version even more. I think it’s more in keeping with Katy’s character. Not to mention a spiritually advanced lifeform.
It will help if you have read that original ending, by the way - click there if you haven’t, or if you need to remind yourself of it.
This alternate ending is actually more of a scene rewrite (as opposed to an outtake). Namely the scene in the forest. The rest of the final episode is the same. So rather than repeat the entire thing again with that scene replaced, I will just outline the other bits, with a little commentary to follow.
Being assured they have lost their pursuers, Phoebe, Bryn, and Dmitri arrive at the safehouse in North London (I didn’t actually give Dmitri a name originally, but I think he deserves one). Bryn settles down to watch a movie, or something (with beer), whilst the other two say they have to go out. Outside there is panic on the streets of London after the ETI’s message has gone viral and caused something of a furore, as you would expect. Anyhow, then the scene cuts to Katy being transported north out of the city in the back of the van…
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.
Then everything juddered to a halt. She flashed her eyes open. Glanced down as she felt her restraints suddenly dissolve before her, and then rolled her eyes and sighed deeply.
“QAI-TI.” She sighed again, a little wistfully, and spoke gently into the air slightly above her. “I wanted to go home. You weren’t supposed to interfere, with your ghost in the machine thing. Some might call that cheating.”
There was the briefest of silences before the disembodied voice. Soft, female, with a slight, feline lilting to it. “I am aware of that. But you have promises to keep.”
“Promises?”
“You are the one who interfered, remember, when you were supposed to simply record the sequence of events.”
Katy sort of nonchalantly shrugged. “Well, admittedly, I suppose you have a point there. I can’t help being mischievous, you know.”
“Therefore, the Council requests me to inform you are to remain here and help this species in a… diplomatic manner.”
“Diplomatic? Moi?”
“Toi. Besides, this is only the first lifetime you are to lead on this planet, in this timezone.”
Now Katy did choose to be perplexed, and not a little alarmed. “What do you mean?”
Another briefest pause, as QAI-TI reminded Katy that she, too, could do mischief, if it pleased her. “You are not allowed to remember in this first lifetime. Only from next time.”
“Well that’s just grand, isn’t it!”
Did Katy detect some kind of silent chuckle from QAI-TI there? She would wonder about that for some time to come.
But she resigned herself to it. As always. She shrugged as if to say ‘whatever’. “You haven’t hurt those two men, I hope?”
“Negative.”
“Right. Well, then, I guess I’d better start walking. Unless you can conjure me up a Karidel timeship or something?”
“Negative.”
“Thought so.”
“At least…” QAI-TI added thoughtfully, “not in this particular parallel world. Perhaps next time.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds like something to look forward to.” She smiled. “Very well, QAI-TI. I accept my orders.”
And with that Katy clambered out the back of the van and walked around the side, then rapped on the driver’s window with a grin. She tilted her head a little to see that both of them were somewhat immobile, but staring forward with wide, terror-stricken eyes. They were certainly conscious, but somewhat aghast with it.
“QAI-TI. Can you wind the window down for me. Oh, and let them move their heads. We Paschats like eye contact when we communicate, you know. Humans do too, come to think of it.”
“Affirmative.” QAI-TI wound the window down. I did mention nanobots, remember. The driver looked across at Katy with an expression of great horror on his face. Then behind her, where a trillion of those nanobots were beginning to coalesce into a hazy green cloud.
Just for show, you understand.
Katy grinned again. “Right then. I am going to start strolling back along that path there, and you two are going to be staying here. Correct?”
He just quickly nodded his head a few times with an ‘Uh-huh.”
“Excellent. QAI-TI will keep you here for, oh, I’d say another ten minutes or so. Then she will release you, and you shall not be coming after me. Will you?”
They both shook their heads vigorously. Without losing that ghastly look. They were, as it happens, more focused on the shimmering incandescent cloud behind Katy, than her.
She continued. “When you return you may inform Alex of everything which transpired. With no instructions from me. I think we’ll let his undoubted intelligence make that decision for him. But do tell him I am now officially a diplomat. Well. It’s been very nice to make your acquaintance, but these dark, lovely woods are calling me, and I have promises to keep. Apparently. So then, adieu.”
And with that, she feigned a kind of cross between a curtsey and a hat-tipping gesture, grinned at them one final time, then turned and walked away.
QAI-TI, in her guise as a trillion-nanobot cloud, did not move. But if you had been attuned to her, you would have sensed a kind of mischievous smile.
She’s hasn’t really been artificial for around seven billion years, after all…
“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. No more than one metre in front of someone quite familiar to both of them.
Someone who was grinning widely. Someone who decided a mischievous little wave of the paw might lighten the tension.
Phoebe caught a breath and jumped out the car. Then she ran to Katy and threw her arms around her. “I thought we were late. I’m sorry.”
Katy embraced her back, rubbed her nose against the side of Phoebe’s head like cats are supposed to do when they love you, and decided that this time, it wasn’t the right moment for a funny quip.
“QAI-TI looks after us, remember. All of us.”
“But I sensed you wanted to go home. Without saying goodbye.”
Katy pulled back and looked down at Phoebe in a distinctly maternal way. “I did want to go home. I still do. But,” she gave a faint, resigned little chuckle and raised her eyebrows, “apparently I’m supposed to stay here and do the exodiplomat thing. Whether I like it or not. So, no home for me just yet.”
Phoebe laughed and cried at the same time.
Because Katy not going home and leaving her alone on this forbidden planet, was the only thing she really wanted to know in the whole world right now.
“Is that a gun, Phoebe?” Katy suddenly went into stern maternal mode.
“Erm, sure.”
Katy tried a look of disapproval. “You were going to shoot those two humans, weren’t you? Don’t you think that’s a little crude? A little, I don’t know, human?”
“It’s spy stuff, you know.”
Katy just laughed. Not much you can say to that.
Then she glanced over at Dmitri, who was just sitting idly behind the wheel. She waved at him. He just nodded his head nonchalantly. Long time no see, how you doing, that kind of thing. Dmitri made a show of looking at his watch.
“Much as I love these woods, Phoebe, they remind me too much of home. And I don’t want to be homesick anymore. Especially if what QAI-TI told me is true.”
“If what is true?”
“Apparently, I have another thirteen lifetimes of this shithole to get through yet.”
But then it was Phoebe’s turn to play mischief.
She grinned, and was about to open her mouth to say something, something she really, really shouldn’t say in this particular parallel world, but then found that only air came out.
Air with the faintest tinge of incandescent green to it.
“Oh, right,” Katy muttered with a little irritation. “you’re not allowed to tell me either, eh?”
“Affirmative.”
“Always the last to know.” They both looked up and around, as is everyone’s habit when talking to disembodied AIs, but then thought, does it really matter?
Not now it doesn’t.
Not when they, as a family, were together again after all these long orbits…
Then we have the scene with the UN Secretary General’s address, in which he says the UN is taking over and bypassing the corrupt Security Council and is intent on fixing all the world’s problems. Most people I know would say this is entirely unrealistic, given how many opportunities the UN General Assembly has had to do precisely that. Your average Sci-Fi reader, however, might think it’s perfectly reasonable, especially given the success of unrealistic stories like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future. I say it should have been obvious by now that the so-called leaders of men have no care whatsoever for humanity or this planet. That’s why I also say it is necessary for humanity to remove such creatures and learn how to govern themselves. Still, I had to put this bit in for a nice, satisfying, upbeat and hopeful ending (especially if I wanted to make it ‘commercially viable’ lol). We can after all live and hope that humanity might one day grow up. Especially if real Contact ever did happen to force that event.
Notice as well that the SG uses the word ‘family’ repeatedly to refer to humanity (which ties in with Katy and Phoebe in the previous scene).
Oh, you may have noticed in the original version of the SG’s speech that he didn’t mention Israel-Palestine - well, I wrote this story several years before Israel accelerated its genocide of the Palestinians, otherwise I would’ve mentioned it. There is certainly a more serious story to be made out of the Contact scenario, if we based that story entirely on the idea that the Brookings Report’s predictions are true, namely that ‘traditional social structures’ (especially including monotheistic ideologies) would break down. I’m not sure if I’m the person to write that story, though. I’m not great at writing humans.
[Sometimes the Great Image Generator utterly surprises you - I simply typed in ‘the Pleiades’, and that’s what it gave me. Awesome!]
That previous scene is effectively the ending. The final scene is in fact a flashback. You have to read carefully to notice that, though, because I didn’t really advertise it. There’s a bit where Phoebe says she’s ‘just starting’ her thesis, then Katy suggests she looks at Proxima. The purpose of this flashback was largely to confirm the little twist which is that Katy and Phoebe do of course know each other, but are pretending not to. It also explains a bit more about Phoebe’s thesis, in the sense of harnessing flare star energy to power the hypergate network (think artificial wormholes between systems). This hypergate network is something Katy describes in her books - I do too, so there’s a bit of postmodern self-referential stuff going on there.
If you were not aware this was a flashback, however, then you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a kind of epilogue set a few years later, after Katy has written another story and is signing copies of it at a SF convention (as you do). In other words she’s become famous and respected and successful again and is doing her mischievous diplomacy thing. In this alternate ending-version, however, I would probably be minded to add a bit to hint that actually this is a parallel world in which Katy is doing her second incarnation, which is much like the first, but also a flashback to a time before the events of the story. So she’s having to go through the whole thing again, in other words. Given that she’d know this, the joke is rather on her. This would then lead into the next Katy story, where the timeline diverges. That’s a bit too complicated, though, for an epilogue scene.
The next story does, however, start at another book-signing SF convention, though, so it does connect up quite well. I will publish this second Katy misadventure at some point in the not too distant future. If you liked this one, you will like it. Trust me, you shall.
So, what I said at the beginning about this version being more in keeping with Katy’s mischievous and upbeat character is kind of true. Although in the original version (which was her first outing in a story) you get to see a much more serious side of her. Because despite her humour, she does take her exodiplomacy task seriously, since she is perfectly aware of how important it is. Her way of approaching it, however, is to be aware that humans would be really quite scared if a real Contact happens. See my Event Day musings for more on that. So Katy’s approach is to be mischievous and playful to try and alleviate humanity’s fear of the other.
One of the misgivings I personally have (sometimes) about the original version, in which Phoebe ends up shooting the two men, rather than trusting that QAI-TI wouldn’t let them shoot Katy, is because of the question ‘is that really what a supposedly spiritually advanced lifeform would do?’ (especially when you have QAI-TI on your side). This is why Katy suggests to Phoebe in the alternate version that to do so would be a little crude - and also a little ‘human’. There’s a strong argument there. However, I decided to keep the original because there is also much for Phoebe in particular to be angry about - the fact that humanity does terrible things and refuses to listen and all the rest of it. And it’s not always because of fear. This is a dystopia, after all. And a sufficiently spiritually and psychologically mature lifeform would feel that even more keenly. And they would not be above ‘doing what must be done’. Even if that action makes them appear crude or human or immature.
In other words, the story does have a serious, hard-hitting aspect to it, which is reinforced by that harsh version of the ending.
And it’s not, after all, that spiritually or psychologically mature lifeforms don’t have emotions - that’s important to also remember. It’s simply that they do not allow those emotions to control them. They make their own decisions.
So, this is why I do like the original version. It does make sense. But equally, so does version two. As I said, perhaps it depends on which mood you’re in.
This second version, however, does set things up nicely for Katy’s second misadventure.
That is where we shall be going next. Well, after a few little related diversions, that is.
But rest assured that Unofficial Katy will return. After all, that’s her lot in life…
If you enjoyed Ciao, SETI! I would love it so very much if you were to reward me with a like, comment and share. Thank you!
On the other paw tho (re Phoebe shooting the two baddies) - what if QAI-TI had been late?
Because you just never know, do you?
Love both endings (actually think I prefer the 1st tbh - because I'm mean like that ;) )