Chapter 27
“What time is the conference with Trikala?” Hanna asked as they were waiting for their transpod to arrive.
“10:00 am here, 9:00 am in Greece,” Yves responded, not looking up from his commpad.
“How do you know they’ll be connecting so early?” Hanna said.
“I threatened them,” Yves said, looking up with a sly grin on his face. “I told them if they wanted the broadcast for the opening of their elevator to be direct from Tikala, they had to be online at 9:00 am each day last week and this week. They know I’m not kidding since we had the cast from here last week when the Turks didn’t cooperate with my requests. And nothing would make the Greeks happier than to have one up on the Turks.”
“Are you picking up some of my tricks, dear?” Hanna said with her own grin, pinching Yves in the side. “I hope I’m not rubbing off on you.”
“Rub as much as you like,” Yves said, stepping closer to Hanna to pinch her derriere.
“Sorry, lover,” Hanna said, swatting away Yves’ hand. “You’re too late for that this morning. Besides, our ride is here.”
And with that, the transpod pulled up in front of where they were standing.
Hanna hopped in, leaving Yves on the sidewalk with a clearly disappointed look on his face.
“Perhaps we don’t have to get to the offices as early any more,” Yves said as he climbed in next to his friend. “There isn’t too much new coordination going on, and the teams we have in all of the locations seem to be doing a fine job of organizing. That way we could sleep in a bit or do other things if we are interested.”
“It’s almost the twenty-second century and you Frenchmen still think you’re the world’s best lovers,” Hanna said. “You have quite the ego.”
“You mean I have quite the…” Yves started to say, but was interrupted by the speaker.
“Ceinture de sécurité, s’il vous plait,” the transpod announced.
“Zut!”, Yves cursed under his breath, grabbing the seat belt. “Zero accidents in the département in the past six months. And if there was one, we’re not going fast enough for anyone to get hurt, with all of the air cushions in these things.”
“This thing isn’t going to move until you follow its order,” Hanna said.
Yves finished buckling himself in, and the transpod sped away.
“Do you have any special areas of interest with our Greek friends, today,” Yves asked Hanna.
“Yes,” she answered. “Can they start loading up three shifts a day starting on the twentieth?”
Yves looked at his fellow passenger, “The elevator isn’t even complete, and that would throw them immediately into full capacity on the first day it opens. You are joking, correct?”
“I’m not sure I am,” Hanna replied. “I keep getting questioned multiple times per day by the aliens why we won’t let more people onto the elevators already running in the other cities.”
“The Greeks aren’t organized enough yet to have that level of throughput,” Yves said. “Besides, the EC Consensus Board only authorized one-thousand colonists per week until we get video evidence from Nova.”
“I know all that, but the aliens don’t seem to understand our bureaucracy very well,” Hanna said. “They keep saying every other elevator is operating at full capacity, and they say we’re not holding up our end of the bargain.”
“Negotiation is not one of their talents,” Yves commented. “And besides, the Americans aren’t shipping large groups of people yet either. We’ve arranged for eighty-thousand people to leave here. How many more do they think will want to leave here?”
“The Chinese have shipped three-quarters of a million people,” Hanna noted. “That’s how many people the aliens think want to leave from Europe.”
“History and social awareness are not their talents either,” Yves said. “You’ve heard the stories about how the Chinese Army is helping round up ‘volunteers’! If we didn’t have riots, we’d at least have member nations effectively shutting us down with all the hearings we’d have to respond to if we rushed things faster than they’ve approved.”
“I’m not sure how much longer the member nations will be able to control the narrative,” Hanna said. “Once the videos start arriving, I think people will be clamoring to leave.”
“You have a lot more faith in the human spirit of adventure than I do,” Yves responded. “Four and one-half million people have been sent away from Earth already. I really think we’re reaching the maximum of what this experiment may entail, and we’ll have a lot of infrequently used space elevators before long.”
“That’s not even one-half of one percent of our population,” Hanna clarified. “Surveys I’ve seen said ten percent of the global population would move given the chance for a better life somewhere else. And I think that’s what we’re giving them.”
“I believe the opportunity is great, but I really need to see it to truly believe it,” Yves said.
“And that’s why I told you that you should take on this new assignment. You’ll get to see first hand, unedited proof of what the aliens know we can accomplish. I’m truly jealous! Except I know you’ll let me take a peak, right?” Hanna replied with a wink.
“Yes, I’ll let you take a peak,” Yves said. “I’m still not sure why I agreed to take this job. I’m not a public relations person, yet I became a spokesperson and press relation expert for the ESA. I’m not a video specialist, yet I’m becoming a documentary producer.”
“You’ve done a great job with the news conferences,” Hanna assured him. “And it just makes sense that you should have awareness of the details when you talk about the videos.”
“If the videos ever show up,” Yves said quickly.
“And what would you do instead?” Hanna asked. “The asteroid and satellite tracking is not really that exciting any more.”
“We still need to track objects,” he replied.
“And we’ve got people doing that,” she responded. “Besides, you need to keep a respectable profile if you’re going to keep the attention of the press. Your cute little accent can only attract them for so long.”
The transpod pulled up to the entrance gate of the ESA office park. Yves and Hanna both held their identity bracelets next to the commlink in the transpod, which communicated the relevant details to the commlink in the gate, which opened to let the transpod through.
After passing through, Yves continued the conversation. “You know that I like my schedule. I’m going to the ETIOT monitoring room to start my day the same as every day. I’m not going to be upstaged by either the Americans or the Chinese again when it comes to locating any of our friends or their handiwork.”
“And you’ve done a fine job of that, Monsieur Al-Battani,” Hanna said with a tone of mock approval. “Every transport arriving from the asteroid belt has been duly and properly documented and communicated by your team.”
“There are too many of those damn transports circling above us right now,” Yves complained.
“I know how you can solve that problem,” Hanna said as the transpod pulled up in front of Building 10 and its door opened. “Send more people up the elevators so the transports fly away.” She leaned over to give Yves a kiss on the cheek, and hopped out of the transpod.
“What do you have going on here today?” Yves asked quickly.
“Director General Brożek wants to review the post-construction plans,” Hanna replied.
“Again?” Yves asked as the transpod door was shutting.
Hanna nodded and waved, as the transpod left the entrance of the building.
Yves stared out of the window as the vehicle made its way to his office.
Upon arriving, Yves waved his identity bracelet next to the identification post in front of the door, walked in, and proceeded to the first sub-level of the building.
“Bonjour Lucie,” Yves said as he entered the satellite tracking room.
Lucie Saint-Germaine turned to glare at him.
“What have I said to upset you already?” Yves said defensively.
“It’s not what you said, it’s what you are going to say next,” the ETIOT-monitoring shift supervisor.
Yves laughed. “OK, I promise you, I won’t ask if you found anything to report last night.”
Lucie didn’t reply but just continued to glare at the new arrival.
Yves walked over to an open workstation, synched his bioscan to connect, and began looking through the technical data collected in the past twenty-four hours.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, the reminder on his bracelet told him to head to the main video conference room on the third floor.
Yves made his way upstairs and settled into a seat around the conference table five minutes before the start of the meeting.
After a few minutes, both General Director Martyna Brożek’s and Hanna’s images appeared in virtual seats on the side of the conference table.
“Good morning, General Director Brożek,” Yves said with a start.
“Bonjour, Yves,” the General Directory replied. “Hanna said you had a 9:00 am call with Trikala and I thought I might listen in to get the latest news and save you time from having to send an update later this morning.”
“Well, yes, of course, you’re welcome to attend any session,” Yves said, noticing Hanna’s smile in the image in his periphery. “Is there anything you’d like to focus on in this session, Director?”
“Please, no,” she responded. “This is your session. Just pretend like I’m not here.”
The images from Trikala began popping into the conference. Many of them likewise had a surprised look when they noticed the General Director in the virtual conference room.
“Good morning, everyone,” Yves said. “It looks like the critical people are here, so we’ll dive right into the agenda.”
“Nikos,” Yves said, directing his gaze across the table at the virtual image of the Site Coordinator for the Greek location, “Can you provide an update on the progress of the elevator?”
The meeting progressed with news on the observation of the elevator construction, of the final steps to prepare the colonists transition buildings to a twenty-four hour operation, of the pace of colonist selection, and down through a dozen other topics on the agenda.
About forty-five minutes into the meeting, a bright orange alert bubble appeared in the corner of Yves’s commblock. He clicked to open it.
“Yves, we’re receiving information on the Nova video channel in the communication center. Danielle.”
Yves popped his head back up, looking to see if anyone noticed his attention had waned. The Trikala site coordinator was still talking.
Yves typed a quick message to Hanna. “I need to get to comm center. Video arriving.”
He looked back up and glanced at Hanna’s image to see if she would react. He smiled when he saw her look of surprise, and returned his attention to the Greek speaker while she replied.
“Go! I’ll close things out here,” Hanna typed in a reply message.
Yves waited for the speaker to take a breath and then jumped in, “My apologies, Nikos, I need to step away for a bit.”
Hanna took the queue, “I’ll be glad to walk through the rest of the agenda, Yves.”
“Thank you, Hanna,” Yves said, and quickly disconnected from the conference.
He practically ran downstairs to the communications center and got frustrated when the doors to the room didn’t open, before he realized he forgot to swipe his identity bracelet on the recently installed security post.
After swiping in, he jogged over to where Danielle Malraux, the shift supervisor, was standing, staring over the shoulder of one of the communication technicians.
“Bonjour Danielle,” Yves said, “What are you seeing?”
“Nothing yet,” Danielle answered. “But the channel we’ve been monitoring has finally become active with a signal. It just started coming in about ten minutes ago. I thought you would want to know right away.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Yves said with excitement.
Then, after staring at the screen for another ten seconds, he asked, “When will we start to see something?”
“We’re not sure,” Danielle answered with an unsurprised voice.
Yves did have a look of surprise and turned to Danielle, “Why?”
Danielle explained, “It will take some time for enough of the signal to arrive that will allow us to filter in the proper scalar tension. This, in turn, tells us which quintom rate to apply so we can convert the signal into the proper digital feed. At that point, we let the digital image and sound formation software take over.”
The explanation didn’t clear Yves’ expression. “I failed my course in dark energy at University,” he explained.
Danielle giggled. “It’s like a Morse code, but we don’t know the order of how dots and dashes form letters. In fact, we don’t know how short a dot is or how long a dash is. The first part of the signal gives us the details that, once analyzed, give us the instructions on how to convert the signal to visible energy. Based on both the distance the signal needs to pass and the various stellar materials it passes through, the introductory signal will vary from location to location.”
“So, should I get a cup of coffee, take a nap, or come back tomorrow,” Yves asked.
“Get a cup of coffee,” Danielle said. “It should probably take another fifteen to forty-five minutes to finish the initial deconstruction. Then you’ll be able to see some pictures.”
“Thank you,” Yves said with a tone combining embarrassment, annoyance and sarcasm. He looked around the room, “Can I use that station on the side to follow up on some work?”
Danielle looked to where he was pointing. “Yes, that’s fine. And we have our own coffee machine if you need some of that as well.”
Yves reconnected to the meeting, but without sharing his image.
“So you’ll agree to try and be up to a full three-shift capacity by the first week in October?” Hanna was asking.
“Damn her!” Yves thought. “Leave her alone for five minutes and she’ll bend the meeting to suit her will.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Yves said out loud. “I was able to make it back. Where are we at in the agenda?”
Yves could see people looking at their screens, searching for his image.
“Um, we were talking about the schedule for after the elevator opening,” the Greek site coordinator said.
“Great! You’ve really made progress in the meeting,” Yves said quickly. “Director General, will you be able to attend the ceremony in person for this elevator opening?”
“Yes, that is on my schedule,” Director Brożek replied.
“Ok, great! It sounds like that about wraps up the session for today,” Yves continued. “I’ll read the rest of the meeting transcript to catch up. I’m sure everyone is busy with final preparations, so we can sign off for now. Thanks again, Nikos. We’ll catch up again tomorrow at 9:00 am ECT.”
And with that, Yves ended the meeting session.
He looked up from his console to see if there was any activity where Danielle was at. She had sat down herself at a console in the middle of the room, but wasn’t occupied with anything that looked interesting, so Yves decided to take her up on the coffee offer.
As he was walking over to the coffee machine, his commblock buzzed with a notification.
“That was rather abrupt,” Hanna wrote.
Yves typed his reply, “Things should start happening here soon. I want to be ready.”
“No video yet?” Hanna wrote.
“No,” Yves wrote back. “They are still training their software on how to decode the message. I’ll let you know when something comes into view.”
“Thx. Gotta go!” Hanna responded.
Yves got his coffee and checked his commblock for any new work mail. The noise of some chairs shuffling caught his attention, and he saw people gathering around the same technicians console he found Danielle at when he first arrived.
“I guess it was closer to fifteen minutes,” Danielle said when Yves joined the crowd.
Yves looked at the screen, but could only see static. “Are we supposed to …” he started to say, but stopped when the image started sharpening.
It looked like the side of one of the transports. As the image cleared even more, Danielle leaned over the technician, pushed some controls on the console, and looked up to see the image showing on the wall screen.
The transport was in a grassy area in front of a river. The camera must have been on the other side of the river, slightly to the left of the craft. The ramp on the craft had already been lowered, and there were some people already on the soil.
The image was still sharpening, but because it was on the wall screen, the size made the fuzziness very apparent.
“Transfer ratio?”, Danielle asked.
“Seventy-eight percent,” the technician answered.
“Try to zoom on the ramp at eighty-five percent,” Danielle directed.
“We’re only getting seventy-eight percent of the signal?” Yves guessed.
“No, we’re getting one-hundred percent. We’re only able to decode a portion of it. The software is still catching up,” Danielle explained.
Yves watched as the colors became more varied and the image of the people became more defined. More people were now walking down the ramp.
“Eighty-five percent transfer ratio,” the technician said, and the image on the wall screen zoomed in on the side of the ship.
Yves could now distinguish between male and female, mainly by those with facial hair and those without.
There were people of many different skin colors walking down the ramp. Most wearing a tan blousy top and tan pants, but some without any fabric covering their bodies, naked as the day they left their mother’s womb.
“Is there any indication in the starting sequence which site this is coming from?” Danielle asked another technician.
“No, Madame. Only the decoding information. No ID tags whatsoever,” answered the man sitting three seats to the right.
“This is from the United States,” Yves said, not taking his eyes off the wall screen.
Danielle looked at him. “How do you know?”, she asked.
“Even today we don’t have that variety of skin color in Europe, especially in the Ukraine,” Yves shared. “I think we can also count out China, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, the Philippines and probably Mexico. Since this is the first image, and there are plenty of caucasians, this is more likely to be Kansas than Itu, since the Brazilian population is a bit darker, on average.”
Yves turned to look at Danielle, and gave a weak smile. “Searching for patterns was part of my old job. My software isn’t as good as yours, so I had to do more of the original research at times.”
“Ninety-two percent transfer ratio,” the technician said.
“Zoom back out and mark the actors,” Danielle said.
Yves watched the wall screen, the image went back out to full picture, and numbers started popping up above different bodies, following them around as they moved.
The people were easily distinguishable between male and female in most cases, but the clarity wasn’t good enough that full facial features were clear to the human eye. The software was able to determine unique bodies from one another, however. And as image clarity increased, a few names began replacing numbers above certain people on screen.
“Why is it showing the names?” Yves asked. “That wasn’t part of any debrief I heard the colonists had been given.”
“I don’t know what they were told,” Danielle said. “All I know is we were given images of the colonists that had been taken prior to their departure, and were asked to link those into the software to aid with identity recognition.”
Yves pulled out his commblock and sent a message to Hanna. “Images are now arriving, and coming in fairly clear. Since when do we ID the colonists on Nova?”
There was no immediate response.
Yves returned his attention to the screen.
“Ninety-six percent transfer ratio,” the technician said.
“Not a very interesting group,” Danielle commented. “People are just wandering around.”
“She seems kind of determined,” Yves said, pointing to one person walking through the crowd.
The person walked away from the ship and straight to the river. As she was walking, the number “82” appeared above her. “82” stopped at the edge of the water, examining it closely where she stood and then both up-river and down-river. Then, without hesitation, she walked in, waded up to her thighs, knelt down, and leaned back to completely immerse herself.
“What is she doing?” Danielle asked no one in particular.
“She just spent seventeen weeks in bed,” Yves noted. “I think I’d like to wash up after that myself.”
Hanna finally responded to Yves’ note “We’re on our way over. Almost there now.”
Yves returned his attention to the wall screen.
“82” finally stood up, and returned to the shore, where a crowd of other colonists were watching her.
“We’re getting a second feed,” another technician announced.
“On the same frequency?” Danielle asked.
“No, this is up one band,” the technician replied.
“Good. Start decoding, but keep this image on the main screen,” Danielle directed.
“Ninety-nine percent transfer ratio,” the decoder technician said.
“That’s probably as good as we’re going to get today,” Danielle said, turning to Yves. “It will take overnight processing to work out the final percent. We can begin editing tomorrow.”
“Sorry, but we’ll need to have something prepared by noon. I’ll need it for my press conference.” Yves said. “If nothing else, can you pull together the river entry from this feed? Oh, and we’ll need the names and numbers scrubbed.”
By this point, the image on the wall screen showed others walking into the river, most with names above their bodies.
The door to the room opened, and Yves, Danielle and others turned around to see Hanna and Director Brożek enter.
Hanna looked up at the wall screen. “No one told me they would be having a congregational baptism,” she said with slight sarcasm.
“Hmm,” Yves nodded, turning back to the image, “that might be precisely what they are doing.”
“Second feed at seventy-percent,” the decoder technician announced.
“Split the wall screen and bring the second feed up, please, Marcus,” Danielle said.
“That didn’t take nearly as long as the first ship,” Yves noted.
“We’ve got the main sequence from the initial feed,” Danielle explained. “Now we just need to accommodate for any band variations.”
Like the first site, this was an indistinct image of the ship, but the angle was more from the side, only showing the end of the ramp where it touched the ground. The opening was hidden by the side of the ship.
People were departing this ship at a much faster pace than the first ship.
“Colonists from either the Omo Forest or Dar Es Salaam,” Danielle commented, and looked at Yves with a smirk. “Did I get that right?”
Yves just smiled and nodded.
She turned back to the wall screen, “Any tags in the starting sequence for this one?”
“No, Madame. Nothing in this one either,” responded the technician.
“OK, validate which one it is once we’ve got colonists identity confirmation completed,” the communication supervisor directed.
Director Brożek took advantage of the pause in the conversation. “How many videos have we received?”
“This is the second feed on the left,” Danielle replied. “The first is on the right. These are the only received so far.”
“And is that one from Kremenchuk?” the Director General asked, pointing at the right side of the wall screen.
“No, that appears to be from Kansas, Mam,” Danielle answered.
The Director General turned to Hanna.
“We’ve been promised a feed from each of the nine sites,” Hanna said with a slightly nervous tone. “Have you checked all of the signal paths,” she said, turning to Danielle.
“The initial signal started arriving less than an hour ago,” Danielle explained. “The others are still likely en route.
“Eighty-five percent transfer ratio from the second site,” announced the technician.
“Director General Brożek,” Yves said, “the daily news conference is in thirty minutes. I was planning to use some footage from the available transmissions so far. I think it would be a great showcase of our connection with the aliens if we can be the first to show footage from Nova.”
“We’ll want to show Kremenchuk,” the Director General said.
“If we have any footage from that site, we’ll include some,” Yves said. “We can only use what we have so far.”
“Very well,” Martyna Brożek said sternly. “Just make our operations look good, Yves….. as you so often do,” she finished with a softer tone.
“Thank you, Director General,” Yves replied. “And I promise you that footage from Kremenchuk will be featured in the noon briefing every day for the next two weeks.”
Yves turned to Danielle. “OK, I’ll need that sequence from the Kansas ship where….”
“Wait,” Danielle interrupted. “My team just receives the transmissions. You’ll need to talk to the Editing Team for what you want.”
“Where are they,” Yves said with urgent frustration.
Danielle pointed to another person sitting eight chairs away.
Yves walked over to the woman hurriedly pressing, tapping, sliding and slicing her fingers on a screen. “Are you the video editor?”
The woman nodded without looking at Yves.
“I’ll need…” Yves started.
“How long?” the woman interrupted.
“What?” Yves asked.
The woman stopped and looked at Yves. “How long do you want the video segment?”
Yves paused and thought. “Just the segment where ’82’ walks into the river and kneels under the water.”
The woman nodded and turned back to the screen, fingers and hands flying again.
“But not the part where she walks back to shore. That’s a bit creepy,” Yves continued. “And get rid of the number above her head – – and the other names.”
Two quick taps and the video editor points to another screen to the left of her main console.
The video showed the last part of the woman’s walk to and then entry into the river, followed by her disappearance under water and her emerging some seconds later.
“Superb! Now can I also get twenty or thirty seconds of people exiting both ships and another two similar clips of people milling about, but doing nothing obscene or embarrassing?” Yves asked.
The woman nodded.
“Great!” Yves said, looking at his comm block. “I need to head up to the briefing room, so I’ll trust you to finish the work.” And having said that began walking away.
He stopped and turned around, “Oh, and how will I find these segments?” His commblock sounded and he looked down to find a message from Elisabetta Giancarlo. It was the image of the woman in the river with a link to the video.
“How did you know…” Yves started to say.
Elisabetta interrupted again. “We all watch your briefings. You’re more popular than half the football squad captains in Europe! And you’re doing a good job, by the way.”
Yves blushed. “Thank you.”
Yves jogged to the briefing prep room and started straightening his look. He turned to his briefing assistant, “Go out there and delay the start for three minutes.”
The assistant nodded and right before noon, he walked from the prep room into the main briefing area.
Yves took the time to calm down, organize his notes with the other few links Elisabetta had sent him, and checked his looks before heading out onto the briefing stage where the assistant was talking to the reporters.
The assistant saw Yves approach, and said, “So Monsieur Al-Battani will provide the details on the remaining preparations at Trikala.”
“Thank you, Hans,” Yves said, walking to the central podium. “The site at Trikala is in the final stages of preparing for the opening of the elevator next week, as planned. The organizers have completed their interviews and have selected the initial five-hundred people to ride the first elevator trip next Saturday.”
Yves paused and then asked, “Are there any questions?”
The reporters glanced up from their commpads, some starting at Yves, some looking at each other. Then a few hands went up.
“Yes, Bernadette?” Yves said, pointing to the Sky News reporter.
“You don’t delay a conference for five minutes to give us a thirty second update, Yves,” she said. “What other news are you waiting to tell us?”
A big grin came across Yves’ face. “Well, I do have some other information to share.”
Yves tapped on the podium console and behind him two images appeared – a close-up of the woman from the Kansas ship, and a crowd shot of the Omo Forest colonists.
“We just started receiving the transmissions from our initial colonist sites on Nova.” Yves said.
Some of the reporters stood up and leaned closer to see the images. Others began approaching the wall screen.
“Please,” Yves said, holding up his palms. “I’ll send you the links in less than five minutes. Please stay in your seats.” He looked at the BBC reporter who was still approaching the wall screen until he looked at Yves, stopped, and returned to his seat.
“This first image is from the Seneca, Kansas ship from the United States. You can see the reaction the arrival has had on at least one colonist,” Yves said and clicked on the console image. The woman repeated her walk into the river.
Some of the reporters weren’t waiting for the link, and were recording the image on the wall screen.
“Who is that?” asked the reporter from El Observetore.
“I don’t know, to be honest, but I’m sure one of you will tell me soon enough,” Yves said. “As you can see, this is an emotional event for them as well as for us.”
Then, motioning to the other screen, “This image is from the Omo Forest ship from Nigeria.”
Thirty seconds of people stepping off the ramp, walking around the ship, looking at the forest behind the ship, and the lake in front of the ship rolled by seamlessly.
Three reporters started throwing out questions simultaneously.
“How many ships…”
“What day did these…”
“What is the reaction…”
Yves held up his hands again, “Wait a minute, please. We’ll get to everyone’s questions. We have two other short video segments to share, and then I’ll begin calling on people.”
He tapped the podium console and the image of the woman in the river was replaced by a broad shot of a landing ship. “This segment is similar to the last one we just saw from the Omo Forest colony. This is the initial disembarkation from the Seneca, Kansas ship. The camera angle is different, because of the arrangement of water and trees, we think. As best as we can guess, the cameras are up in trees. The Omo Forest colony appears to be next to a lake, whereas the Seneca, Kansas colony is near a river. Again, these are guesses at this point, as we’ve not seen enough of the surrounding area yet.”
Yves tapped the podium console again, and the second screen switched again. “And over there is still the Omo Forest colony, but a few moments after the landing. The initial transmission began arriving around 10:00 am ECT this morning. However, it took some time to unscramble the transmission, so it was after 10:30 by the time the initial low-quality video was available. It was after that we were eventually able to determine the first video was from the Seneca, Kansas colony.”
“Then, after 11:00 am, the second transmission was registered. We’re using body ID to confirm the identity of individuals in the images, which is how we can verify from which colony each of these transmissions are from.”
“No transmissions from other sites are yet arriving. Although, based on departure dates, we would expect it to be at least tomorrow until we hear – or see, as is the case – from any sites other than Kremenchuk and Xian, China. OK, now your questions. Albert?”
“When were these transmissions sent from Nova?” the reporter from Mondial asked.
“That’s a good question, and one I looked into before coming out here,” Yves said. “As you probably know, any dark energy communication we send or receive has the date and time of the transmission, as calculated back to Greenwich Mean Time. I imagine the aliens aren’t as focused on the time in England as we are, since there is no timestamp information in the starting sequence of the transmission. But I’ve already asked our translation team to reach out to the aliens to confirm the Earth date when these were sent. Zara?”
The reporter from Polski Leader stood up, “Why aren’t we seeing any images from Kremenchuk? Did that ship have trouble in transit to Nova?”
“No issues of any kind have been identified with any of the transports,” Yves said quickly. “If you recall, the colonists from the nine sites were reloaded into three interstellar transport vehicles. It could be that the Kremenchuk colonists are on a different vehicle from these two sites, or any number of minor reasons. So I see no reason to worry about any of the other sites at this time. Hélène?”
“How will people be able to follow the happenings at a site,” the Francophone reporter asked.
“Well, a lot of it depends on availability of quality images,” Yves responded. “We only have two hours of transmission from the initial site. Who knows if the cameras have night vision, or if the transmissions will be continuously available. We’ve been told there is no editing done by the aliens prior to transmission. And we plan to make all allowable content fully available. Of course, we have European privacy rules to follow, so we are removing content from those who have opted out of information sharing, and will have age verification for any images requiring consent.”
“How about the new person,” Yves said, pointing to the far left end of the first row.
“Thank you. Jorg Fracescu from the Christian Democrat Standard,” the reporter announced. “Can you tell how many colonists have left each of the first two ships?”
“The transmission didn’t capture the initial opening of the ramp, so we’re not able to count every person leaving, but I would see no benefit for them remaining on the ship, so I’m guessing all one-thousand colonists got off at each site.” answered Yves.
“That presumes a one-hundred percent survival rate during the transit,” Jorg responded. “Presuming they were put into some sort of hiber-sleep, don’t you think it unlikely for that high of a number to be brought out of sleep successfully?”
“Good question, Jorg,” Yves admitted after a pause. “I don’t know. I’ll ask the video technicians to see what they can figure out by examining the transmission.”
A dozen other hands shot up, but Yves didn’t call on anyone else.
“I know there are a lot of questions,” he said, “but as you can tell, I don’t have a lot of answers at this point, since the transmissions have just started arriving. How about this for a plan. I’ll make sure you get additional transmission highlights throughout the afternoon, and we’ll plan to meet here at 6 pm for an end-of-day briefing. We’ll have a lot more analysis complete by that point. You can send me questions throughout the afternoon that I’ll work with the video editing staff to help learn the answers to.”
Many of the reporters nodded their heads in agreement with the idea.
“Ok, thanks, and we’ll see you later today back here,” Yves said.
People started rising from their seats and heading to the door, when Yves noticed a new message on his phone.
“Excuse me!” he yelled out to get the attention of the room. “The communication center just informed me a third transmission has arrived, and it appears to be the Kremenchuk colonists.”
A number of the reporters clapped in recognition of the news.
Yves held true to his promise and hosted a late-afternoon briefing that same day.
The feed from the Kremenchuk colonists site was the only other transmission to arrive that day. But the additional footage received after the landing was enough to more than fill the evening briefing time.
The Kremenchuk colonists had been dropped off at the confluence of two rivers, both much wider than the river next to the Kansas colonists, with the resulting river estimated to be the width of Rhine river near Strasbourg.
The video also showed the first good images of native animals on the planet, as the image from the tree was frequently interrupted by a sloth-like, scaly creature crawling along the branch above the camera. As the animal went back and forth, the branch was lowered by the animal’s weight, blocking the view of the camera until the creature had passed. Eventually, the animal came back into sight, balanced on its hind legs, spread out its front arms to show a large flap of skin, and dove off the branch to sail over to a lower branch on another tree, like a giant flying squirrel.
The other main story from the transmission was the off-loading of the bodies by the transport ship robots. The scenes were particularly disturbing since the robots would carry the bodies in awkward methods that didn’t give much dignity to the bodies of the dead. Yves admitted they were disturbing enough that there was some debate about showing them, but since the transmissions weren’t going just to the ESA, the feeling was the images would make their way out soon enough.
The late-day casts from around the globe focused on this information. One cast went so far as to have a headline “400,000 colonists dead or dying! Do you want to be one of them?”.
By the next morning, the ESA had a continuous feed broadcasting for each site, with a two-hour delay to allow time for individual identification and necessary image scrubbing. Most of the other countries with dark energy communication networks followed a similar pattern.
The transmission from the first three sites now had three different camera signals coming in from each site. Two cameras were noticeably closer than the third, which was typically farther away and provided inconclusive images to determine individual identities. The other difference was that the landing ship had disappeared overnight from each site.
Also that day, transmissions arrived showing the next sites to be established. This included colonists from Xian, Mexico City, and Mangali. A similar pattern emerged to the first day. The video started broadcasting sometime shortly after the ramp opened, with people mostly milling about. Long after people left the ship, the robots eventually began carrying off the bodies of those that had died in-transit. Of special interest was the segment from the Indian site showing the male colonist carrying a female’s lifeless body back onto the ship, only to re-emerge carrying the same body, now clothed, off the ship and off camera.
Protests, which had mostly died down over the past month, sprang up again all over the world, with large crowds gathering at over half of the landing / elevator sites. At a handful, the crowds pressed through the barriers set up by local governments. They made it within a hundred meters of the ship before being stopped by an invisible barrier that caused those who ran into it to be stunned and knocked temporarily unconscious.
In Mangali, India, the anger at the alien ship was then redirected to the local organizing staff after the attack on the alien ship failed. The rioting crowd beat five of the staff to death before order was restored by the state police. Rioting crowds shut down operations at seventeen sites around the globe, with another thirty sites deciding to voluntarily suspend operations until the situation calmed down.
It took another two days for most of the protests to dissipate.
By that point, transmissions from the final three sites started arriving on Earth, and the colonists from Tanzania, Brazil and The Philippines were going through the same familiar activities as the initial six sites on Nova.
By Monday morning, a special meeting had been called for by European Charter members to discuss whether or not the six elevators on EC soil should be allowed to re-open. No colonists had been allowed to enter the loading area since the riots and protests from Friday, three days back. The aliens had been in frequent communication with the ESA, and were sounding more urgent about the need to resume transfers. Director General Brożek called together her own senior staff that morning to prepare a proposed plan for the EC Member States meeting later that day. She made it a mandatory in-person meeting at ESA offices in Sophia Antipolis.
Yves walked into the meeting room on his own. Hanna had remained on-site all weekend, handling communications with the aliens. He saw her already seated next to the Director General, and opted to find an empty seat at the far end of the conference table.
“How are you doing?” he messaged Hanna after he sat down. “You’re looking a bit tired.”
Hanna, who had been studying her commblock, looked up when she saw the message, and gave a tired smile upon seeing Yves.
“I’m holding up,” she messaged back to Yves. “This will be a crazy day. Anything new on the videos overnight?”
“The Brazilians have found the cameras,” Yves wrote.
“?”, was Hanna’s reply.
“Thank you everyone for making it into the office this morning on relatively short notice,” Director Brożek said, bringing the room to attention.
People quieted and those still standing took their seats.
The General Director continued. “We knew the video transmissions had the potential to elicit an emotional reaction, and had prepared for many different contingencies. We had even talked through how to deal with the death of colonists. Seeing robots clean out dead bodies from the alien ships was not one of the expected outcomes. And while I certainly understand the reaction many people had, I was surprised how quickly that reaction turned murderously violent in some parts of the world.”
Many people, including Hanna, nodded in agreement to what the General Director was saying. Yves didn’t react, but instead observed the responses in the room.
“We’ve been asked by the EC Executive Office to focus on two responsibilities today,” Martyna Brotek shared. “Calm the situation and assess our position vis-a-vis the reaction by the alien visitors.”
“First, we’re to bring facts to the public to show the true state of affairs for the colonists. This includes the information about how events have unfolded in line with expectations set for us, as well as the realism we knew would happen when establishing a foothold on a foreign planet. This is also supported by reality we are seeing on the videos.”
“Angelica,” the General Director said, turning to her right, “can you share the summary you have pulled together on this first topic?”
“Thank you, Martyna,” the Senior Director of Planetary Sciences said while bringing up a slide on the wall screen. “Here are five facts the aliens shared with us within the first month of their arrival.”
Alien Statements
Purpose: Aid in establishing colonies on a habitable planet.
# of departure sites: 81
# colonists/day/site: 2,187
Travel time to planet: 17 weeks
Proof of habitability: live video feed
“I’m sure we can come up with more examples, but this is what we quickly pulled together this morning. The intent of this slide is to show a consistent behavior between what the aliens have told us what would happen and what is actually happening.”
Director Guidetti then brought up a second slide.
Human Experiences
Human outposts on the Moon and Mars are high-risk.
Intra-system travel has a 1% mortality rate.
Hiber-sleep has a 5% mortality rate, rising to 20% unmonitored.
Fully informed persons accept post-event traumatic outcome at a rate of 97%.
“We know from studies and from history that there is risk to life,” she continued, “that the level of risk rises when operating outside the norm of daily human life, and that people overwhelmingly accept the outcome, no matter how positive or negative, if they feel fully informed going into a situation. Within the EC, we have expended great effort to ensure every single person that wishes to be a colonist has reviewed the facts and risks, and ensure we have their free-will acknowledgement and acceptance of those risks.”
“What we have seen with the initial mortality during transit to Nova is unfortunate, but not unexpected. Our best assessment is that between eight and eleven percent of the colonists on a given ship have passed during transit. We guessed the level of hiber-sleep monitoring during the voyage would be minimal, so the mortality rate experienced on the alien ships is actually half the rate seen with unmonitored human hiber-sleep situations.”
Yves looked around the table to see many heads nodding in agreement again.
Dr. Guidetti tapped her console screen and a wide-angle image of the Kremenchuk landing site was displayed on the wall screen.
“Now look at what we’ve observed directly from Nova. The colony sites are pristine and ideal for a new start.” The landing-site image shrank and moved to the upper left of the screen.
“Fresh water is a primary feature of each site.” Six images of the lake or river next to the sites were successively shown in the center of the screen and then shrunk to fill in a row along the top of the screen.
“People are cooperating.” A photo of people from the Kansas site carrying wood to a fire with others gathered around it preparing food appeared and then shrunk to begin a column on the left of the screen.
“Basic tools have been made available” An image of Omo Forest colonists collecting stone knives and spears from the pile left by the aliens, followed by a shot of one of the Mexico City colonists holding a bundle of spears and handing them out to other people appeared and began filling in the left-most column.
“And food is available and shelter is being built.” A series of images from each colony site showing people carrying fruits, nuts, animals and fish, as well as photos of lean-to and walled huts, one cabin, and, from the Xian and Mexico City sites, the outline of a small village both groups had started were displayed and filled in the remaining grid of images.
“Overall, the mission to date seems quite successful for an initial endeavor,” Director Guidetti concluded.
“The presentation is quite slick,” Fiona O’Reardon, the Director for Sub-Planetary Observation acknowledged. “But if we show this, people will think we’re giving them a sales campaign. They’ll pick it apart. We have to address the reduced number of colonists that are appearing each day in the transmissions. Anglo-American Interplanetary is live-casting the transmissions with no editing. People will see unpleasantness eventually.”
“Why would a government give a private company the transmissions,” Hanna asked.
“Anglo-American has their own transmission and reception equipment,” Director O’Reardon explained. “They’ve been using dark energy communication with their asteroid mining operations for the past ten years. They’ve also been an outspoken critic of the alien presence ever since they arrived.”
“Then let’s shut them down!” Hanna declared.
“We don’t do that to private companies, and they’re based in South Africa, so we have no jurisdiction there anyway” Director Brożek said. “Besides, that is not the key point. Fiona is correct. That’s a very clear and polished presentation, Angelica, so a job well done in that regard. However, too many people will see it as a polished presentation and not have confidence in the message.”
Yves cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t the best people to share the true story be the colonists themselves?”
“Of course that would be the best, Al-Battani, but how do you propose to interview them?”, Dr. Guidetti said with no small amount of derision.
“The Brazilians have found the cameras,” Yves said. “It seems they are becoming their own film makers.”
A lot of people started talking at once. Yves let the confusion linger, giving a quick wink towards Hanna, who had a smile of amazement herself.
Director Brożek eventually spoke above the din. “And how do you know this, Yves?”
“We started receiving this footage in the past two hours,” Yves said, tapping on his commblock and bringing up a video on the wall console. “It began when one of the colonists was climbing a tree looking for food. He spotted the camera, called his friends over, broke off the branch to which the camera was attached, and shared it with his friends. You can see here that they are passing the branch around to figure out which direction the filming is occurring.”
“Within thirty minutes, there were people scrambling up every tree with visibility to the main encampment looking for another camera. And they found the second near-distance camera,” Yves explained, bringing up a segment showing the image from the second camera shaking and then going in all directions as the branch holding that camera was also broken off and dropped to the people on the ground.
“You can see how much they are excited about their situation and the fun they are having just by watching what we’ve seen so far,” he continued. “In fact, in addition to monitoring the in-bound communication from Nova, we’re also monitoring the main casts from other sponsor nations – and from AngloAmerican as well. Interestingly enough, the AngloAmerican feed from the Brazilian colony is now interrupted. Perhaps they don’t like the happiness being shown from there.”
Yves tapped his commblock one more time to show a new image. “This is the live feed from Camera One.”
Everyone watched as the image showed the camera approaching a group of three women. They were pointing to something behind the camera and laughing. They stopped laughing, looked like they were listening, and then began shaking their heads and looking directly at the camera as it got closer. The view became even more jumpy as the camera was turned, passed around, and stared at by each of the three. Finally, one of the women held the camera in front of her, waved into it and was talking. No sound could be heard, but it appeared the woman was sharing some news. Finally, the camera shook, becoming focused on another woman, who turned from it and batted it away. The camera holder moved it closer to the woman, who jogged away. Then the cameraman began to chase her, with the woman laughing as she ran away.
“Thank you, Mr. Al-Battani,” Director Brożek said. “If this were the European Defence Force, I would give you a field promotion for this. Our meeting with the EC Executive Member Board is in three hours. I need one hour of segments like the one you just showed. Also, include any segments showing positive life activities, like building, eating or large, happy gatherings of people. I would also like a summary of the productive time spent by colonists per drop site, with details by day of the New Kremenchuk site. Can you have that ready for us?”
“Yes, Director Brożek,” Yves replied. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get started on that with my team right now.”
The General Director nodded and Yves pushed his chair back and left the conference table.
As he was leaving the room, the conversation began on how to explain why there were fewer colonists left in the videos compared to the count that left Earth minus those hauled out by robots. Debate quickly broke out about how many people would go off on their own away from the main colony.
When Yves got back to the communication center, he called the team together to explain the request from the General Director. The team was quite happy their work was getting positive recognition, and quickly organized how they would bring the relevant footage together.
One of the technicians monitoring the signal strength called Yves and Danielle over to her station.
“Did any of the other colonies locate their cameras?” the technician asked.
“Not that I’m aware,” answered Danielle. “Why?”
“The signal from the two up-close cameras at the Dar Es Salaam site stopped about about ten minutes ago,” the technician explained. “And almost at the same time, the feed from the Omo Forest colony distance camera stopped.”
She looked at Yves, “I thought the signal was going to fade out as the power source in each camera diminished. But I expected the signal to remain longer than a few days.”
“Let me check,” Yves said.
“How long did the aliens say the power in the cameras would be able to transmit the images to the dark energy re-transmitters on the colonists transport ships?” he messaged Hanna. “And did they say the signal would drop as they switch transmission between transport ships arriving and leaving?”
He could see Hanna typing a response. “Two weeks was their estimate. And, no, the signal should not drop. Why?”
“Early signal loss from a few cameras,” Yves typed in reply.
“Can you bring up the last ten minutes from each of the signals that were dropped? And also the other three cameras from those two sites?” Yves asked the technician. “If you can send them via split screen to those monitors at the end, that would be appreciated.”
Yves began walking towards the end of the row of consoles.
Danielle followed him.
“Are you looking for anything in particular,” she asked.
“Possibly,” he replied. “I guess I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it, whatever it is.”
They watched the ten minute segment of the videos together, with the two distance cameras split on one console, and the four up-close cameras split between the other two screens. Nothing remarkable passed on any image.
Yves tapped on the console and brought up the last minute of the transmissions before the three cut out. He then ran the last fifteen seconds of the two distance cameras, stopped the video, reversed five seconds, and proceeded forward frame by frame, repeating the last few seconds when both cameras were working and then the first few seconds of when just the Omo Forest colony scene was shown.
“There!” he said.
“I think I know what you’re talking about, but do you mind repeating that last activity one more time?” Danielle requested.
Yves nodded and repeated the single frame walk through.
“Yes,” Danielle nodded. “It looks like the signals have gotten crossed. I’ll ask Omar to recalibrate them.”
“Or maybe the signals are coming through as our alien friends intend,” Yves said. “And they don’t expect us to notice that the Dar Es Salaam distance images look a lot like the Omo Forest site.”
Danielle looked at him quizzically, then her eyes widened. “I guess you’ve found that thing you were looking for.”