Unforgettable journey to other planets

“If we’re at a blind alley, I have to tell Dr Lamichen,” Tulu-Manchi said.

“Maybe I should call my boss first?” doubtfully, Yulia said.

“Yes, you can call him. On that computer,” Dr Capri pointed to the old white computer in the corner, “there is the Internet. Meanwhile, I’ll go downstairs.”

Yulia was left alone and felt despair creep in. “What the hell is going on here?” she thought. She copied the data onto a flash drive. Mozart’s “Magic Flute. Aria of the Queen of the Night” played on the speakers. Yulia didn’t like the pressure of this music. She turned down the volume and went to the computer on the opposite wall. There Yulia launched Skype and typed in her boss’s username.

“Hello,” said Yulia’s boss, “how’s work going?”

“Mikhail Nikolaevich, we installed the system, but we are getting strange data. Can I send you the information, so you can check?”

“Tell me in words what happened,” Mikhail asked doubtfully.

“Well, to make a long story short, after the installation the system went crazy. It found an anomaly, not a space anomaly, but here, on the ground. The source is somewhere in the mountains. The system shows a large emission of energy and electromagnetic radiation.”

“So…”

“I decoded the signal. It was an audio signal on a long-range frequency. The signal…” Yulia turned to her laptop and heard faint sounds of music, “the signal is a ‘golden record’ from Voyager. Remember, music, greetings, sounds of Earth?” she became confused.

Mikhail Nikolayevich’s face changed. It was apparent, even with the poor Internet bandwidth and the low quality of the picture, that he did not know how to respond. He was still waiting for Yulia to continue.

“It’s kind of weird,” Mikhail said, singing the words a little bit.

“I checked everything, the system works properly. It’s not the settings. The system must have reacted to the frequency of the signal.”

She knew that none of the Roscosmos executives don’t like it when employees can’t make assumptions on their own to solve a problem. And emergency situations were not something Mikhail Nikolayevich liked.

“All right, Yulia, send us all the data, we’ll check it now.”

“I already did.”

Mikhail Nikolaevich checked the mail, saw the letter from Yulia, clicked the ‘forward’ icon, typed a few words and sent the letter.

“Stay by the computer, I’ll call you back,” said the boss goodbye.

Yulia, disconnected. She sat by the computer, trying to figure out how disappointed the boss was, until scraps of the sounds of the ill-fated recording reached her. “It’s a bug, and I can’t explain it,” Yulia thought.

Dr Capri and Dr Lamichen came up to the room. Tulu-Manchi was explaining the situation to him in Nepali. Giyanu Lamichen quietly listened to his colleague’s story and nodded approvingly. Nothing seemed to bother him. Yulia could only understand words like ‘Voyager’ and ‘Bach’ in the doctor’s words.

“Right,” Dr Lamichen said in English. “Yulia, you need to look into the causes of this mistake. It is very important for us. Please start over. I’ll call the workers, and you can reinstall the whole system.”

“But…” Yulia began, “it’s not about the installation. It’s about the signal. Either it’s some kind of experiment by the Chinese, or it’s a reflection of the satellite signal,” she couldn’t believe what she was saying, but she continued on. “I informed my supervisor, and he is checking the signal now. He’ll check with the Chinese if he needs to.”

“Then continue,” Dr Lamichen said in English, looking at Tulu-Manchi.

Dr Capri nodded back at him, and Dr Lamichen left the room.

“What does your boss say?” Tulu-Manchi asked Yulia.

“He said he would call back when he checked the signal.”

“Yulia, what else do we know about this signal?” taking a seat next to him, Dr Capri asked.

“Well, let’s start from the beginning,” Yulia sighed heavily. “First of all, it’s on the frequency we use to transmit the signal from spacecraft to Earth. Second, along with the information signal, a powerful magnetic pulse emanates from the same place. The signal is very clear and stable. This does not happen when we are talking about a signal from space.”

“Okay,” assessing Yulia’s words, the doctor said. “What do we know about the information in this signal?” he asked the question and started answering it himself. “This is the recording that was on Voyager. We were able to get the audio signal, but you say that there are pictures and something else.”

“Yes,” Yulia confirmed, “I think in an hour we’ll be able to find out all the exact information when my boss checks the signal through the Roscosmos channels.”

“Let’s check the exact coordinates for now and try to find the nearest village or town on the map,” suggested Dr Capri.

Together they went to the old stationary computer. Yulia saw that there was a Skype message from her boss, “Call you back in a minute.”

She sat down beside the computer. Dr Capri looked at her carefully and asked:

“Bad news?”

“No,” Yulia shook her head, “he said he would call back in a minute. But for some reason, I am not happy.”

A message popped up on the screen indicating an incoming call. Yulia answered and moved closer to the monitor.

“Yulia,” Mikhail said sharply, barely appearing on the screen.

Noticing Dr Capri, he said in English.

“Hello. I’ll quickly tell Yulia the information in Russian, and then she will translate it for you.”

Dr Capri nodded incomprehensibly and sat down next to Yulia on the chair. The boss began to say something very quickly to Yulia, and she answered briefly.

“When did you get the signal?” he asked.

“An hour or an hour and a half ago.”

“The signal is stable and strong. We have contacted the Chinese, they can see it. The European Space Agency also confirms the signal. NASA is still saying nothing.”

“So it’s not a mistake?”

“Yulia, what have you found out?” Mikhail asked briefly, distracted by the people around him.

“We defined the exact coordinates. It is a mountain in Nepal.”

“That’s already there. Next,” looking at the sheets in front of him, Mikhail said.

“In addition to the audio signal, the devices show magnetic radiation…”

“Yulia, everything is there. Pictures from Voyager, recordings. This is the whole golden record, and it’s not something that is posted on the Internet on NASA’s website, it’s the one itself, the original. The signal is very strong and accompanied by very strong magnetic radiation.”

“What?” Yulia turned to Dr Capri and looked at him hopefully.

Dr Capri responded to her gaze, but could not help her. He didn’t understand the Russians’ conversation.

“How did the detection work out?” Yulia and Tulu-Manchi’s silent dialogue was interrupted by her boss.

“We started the system, and I turned on the search. The equipment started giving me a targeting error. They tried to point again and again, but they couldn’t. I turned off the telescope and the system started getting a steady signal through the antennas. I used an audio simulation program, and we heard music. Then we realized it was something familiar…” Yulia didn’t have time to finish her thought.

“I’ll call you in half an hour,” Mikhail said without disconnecting his Skype, stood up from the table and started talking to someone.

Yulia looked down at the old keyboard, and only now she noticed that there were incomprehensible squiggles on it next to the usual English letters. Tulu-Manchi looked at Yulia in silence. His patience seemed to have no limits, he just waited. Yulia began to speak, staring down at the incomprehensible squiggles:

“The Chinese and ESA confirmed the signal. Everyone can see it. The signal is not the only problem, there is also strong magnetic radiation. Everyone is trying to figure out what’s going on right now,” Yulia looked up at Dr Capri.

He was calm and deciding something inside.

“The signal is coming from the territory of Nepal,” he said and stopped.

Yulia did not understand whether it was a question or a statement, and just waited to see what would happen next.

“Can you build something to register the signal under hiking conditions?” Tulu-Manchi asked.

“I don’t have the equipment,” Yulia tried to say.

“We can find something in our warehouse. Come down, I’m going to Dr Lamichen,” Dr Capri stood up with the look of a man who had made up his mind.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s happening in Nepal, so we have to go there,” the doctor said as he left the room.

Part 1 – Chapter 12

Bernard Bajolet was twiddling a phone in his hands, sitting at the conference table at the headquarters of the European Space Agency. He could not understand, since when did the ESA become involved in national security issues. But he received a personal call from the minister asking him to come to an urgent meeting. Around him sat several heads of various organizations whom he knew well. All of them were also looking at each other incomprehensibly.

“Well, gentlemen,” he thought, “what’s the news in orbit?”

Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of ESA, entered the room. Everyone turned to him mechanically.

“Madame and Monsieur, sorry to keep you waiting,” he began with undisguised excitement. “Well, about seven hours ago in Kathmandu during the installation of the anomaly detection system in outer space, a signal was detected.”

The light in the room dimmed and the desktop of the computer of one of Mr. Dordain’s assistants appeared on the big monitor. The assistant opened a map file so that everyone could understand exactly where the detection had occurred. At this time, Jean-Jacques Dordain continued:

“The signal was picked up at the Kathmandu Observatory. Roscosmos was the first to confirm it. They checked and found exactly the same anomaly. The head of Roscosmos asked us for confirmation. We did that about four hours ago. The signal is believed to be coming from the foothills in northeastern Nepal, Mount Kan-chen-junga,” he said slowly, reading from the sheet. “The signal contains information from the so-called golden recording of Voyager made in the seventies.”

“Is that a threat to national security?” someone next to Bernard Bajolet said with indignation.

The head of ESA hesitated a bit and added:

“Um. The signal itself is on a space transmission frequency, that’s not the biggest problem. Although we can’t explain that either. The biggest problem is the active magnetic anomaly.”

There is a silent pause in the room. It was interrupted by the French Minister of Security.

“Gentlemen, we are not talking about contact with aliens, but we need to understand what is going on. What resources do we have to check this quadrant?”

“We can take detailed pictures of the area,” suggested one of the generals, “we can analyze the recording to determine the type of transmitting device.”

“Okay,” the minister nodded. “What else do we know? Please, Monsieur Dordain.”

The head of the space agency began to talk:

“The recording itself is no different from the Voyager recording. We tend to assume that this is the original, not the recordings that are in the NASA archives and public sources, this is exactly the original from the Voyager record.”

“How did you figure that out?” Bernard Bajolet asked.

“The quality of the signal.”

“I thought it was just an attached disk on the Voyager plating. Is it possible that the signal is being broadcast?” asked one of the generals.

“No,” replied the minister for the head of the ESA, “so we need to get to the bottom of this situation.”

That ended the meeting, several generals began to call their teams to find out more about the situation. The minister asked all the heads of departments to stay in Paris and attend an extended meeting on the situation tomorrow. Bernard Bajolet went out into the corridor and checked his mail and his work calendar.

He dialed the number of his assistant.

“Listening,” Jean-Pierre’s voice was heard.

“Jean-Pierre, I received the documents. Very good. I want to ask you…” said Bernard tiredly. “You will have to go to Tokyo instead of me. I have informed the minister that you will make a report on our proposals.”

“It will be done, monsieur. Thank you.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Bernard Bajolet breathed in his chest, “forgive me for not giving you a rest. Tomorrow you can take the day off. I have to stay in Paris.”

“Okay.”

Part 1 – Chapter 13

Jean-Pierre, rested and in the mood for a long flight, stood in the aisle of the plane. There were several passengers in front of him. The stewardess smiled at him and greeted him.

“Good evening, monsieur.”

Jean-Pierre walked to the back of the plane. He had to change the ticket of the boss, and there was only a free seat in the tail of the plane. He walked down the narrow aisle, holding a small suitcase on wheels in front of him. A young Japanese man with headphones was sitting at the window, Jean-Pierre put the suitcase on the luggage shelf and sat on the seat in the center of the row. People were seated in their seats and preparing for the flight. A girl sat down next to them. Jean-Pierre began to repeat to himself the theses of the report, which he would have to present tomorrow. The plane began to roll out for takeoff.

Jean-Pierre glanced to the left – the Japanese man was typing something on his phone and listening to music; he turned to the right and saw a postcard in the hands of the girl.

“Nika,” Jean-Pierre said in French with a smile, “goddess of luck.”

“Excuse me,” the girl said in English.

Jean-Pierre looked closely at the girl and realized he could guess where she was from. Blond hair down to her shoulder blades, smiling face, high forehead, and wide-set eyes. She was dressed in a very bright sweater, and she had a special travel pad around her neck.

“Nika brings good luck,” he said in English, “and good luck is always nice.”

The girl smiled and nodded understandingly. She liked that Frenchman with the gray hair and the tired but kind look. She looked again at the image and said:

“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. My name is Debby.”

“Jean-Pierre,” he nodded briefly.

The plane accelerated down the runway and threw its nose up. Jean-Pierre leaned back and continued to mull over the report and the speech plan with his eyes closed. Debby put the card away in her purse and sank into her thoughts. In them, she was already driving with Sango in the car and telling her impressions of the Louvre. The museum had given her some interesting thoughts about how to get the children involved in learning. Debby imagined telling a friend about her idea. The name of the project was a draft, but she liked it a lot. “Attention conquers suffering,” she wrote in her notebook.

“Everyone wants to feel connected to great things and great people. Children need to feel connected to the history of the country and the world. They are the ones who create it and perceive it. They make it relevant and important.” Debby put her pen aside and thought.

The plane rose gently above the clouds and leveled off in the ocean of air.

Part 1 – Chapter 14

People were gathering in the large hall of the European Space Agency. There were many more people than yesterday. There were representatives from various countries and different agencies. They were all seated around a large table.

“So, gentlemen,” Jean-Jacques Dordain’s voice rang out, “let’s begin our meeting. Today we are joined by colleagues from Russia, Nepal, and India. Representatives from NASA will be joining us a little later. I would like now to come up with a common position on the situation. Please.”

The Nepalese general turned on his microphone:

“We are monitoring the area, no anomalies so far. Tomorrow we will be able to survey the area with the Roscosmos scientist who detected the signal.”

The words of the Nepalese military officer were confirmed by the Indian commander.

“The cordon at the entrance to Kanchenjunga Park reports that there are no incidents in the quadrant. We have received pictures from a drone. Mountains and snow.”

“What are your plans,” said the Roscosmos representative to the Indian.

“We will wait for the report of Nepalese expedition. For now, we are preparing a special team at the closest base to the point. It’s not that fast, it’s a very distant area.”

“Did you compare the images from the drone and the map of signal distribution?” Igor Komarov, the head of Roscosmos, continued to ask.

“Yes, there is absolutely nothing there, it’s the eastern side of Mount Kanchenjunga. Not a village or even a climbing station.”

“What about the dynamics of the signal?” Jean-Jacques Dordain clarified.

“It is still broadcasting. The magnetic field is getting stronger. We think it may be affecting the weather,” a scientist next to the head of ESA said.

“What do NASA say?” the Indian general asked.

“So far they have not given any answers to us or to Roscosmos,” replied Jean-Jacques Dordain. “The head of NASA, Charles Bolden, and his team are coming to see us today. So far, silence. I suggest we get together when they get here.”

Everyone started getting up from the table and making phone calls. Bernard Bajolet approached the French Minister of Security.

“Monsieur.”

“Yes, Bernard, what do you think of all this?” the minister asked, taking Monsieur Bajolet aside.

“Monsieur, frankly, I don’t understand why everyone is so worried. It’s just a signal.”

“Look at the report,” the minister pointed to the blue folder marked ESA on his desk, “they say the signal is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“М?” Bernard Bajolet said in surprise.

“Along with this signal comes a very strong impulse. A large cyclone is forming, seismic activity has increased. They say that all this may lead to a major catastrophe.”

Bernard Bajolet silently stretched a ‘yes’ and thought about it. He was used to looking for a threat in people and other nations, but he rarely saw it in nature.

“If it were nature,” his mind raced, “there would be no signal from Voyager.”

Part 2 – Chapter 15

The morning was frosty. David ran quickly out of the tent and started jumping on the spot. Steam was coming out of his mouth and the cold air was burning his body. It was about six o’clock in the morning, but the sun was already visible. David turned to it, and shouted as hard as he could:

“Hello, world!”

The echo rang out between the neighboring hills, and the spirit of adventure colored the landscape with bright paint. David is ready for anything and knows for sure that everything will be alright. He brewed some tea and drank with relish. The doubts seemed to be completely gone.

“Is this what life tastes like?” David thought aloud.

He packed all his belongings, checked that his shoes were laced up well and walked towards the foothills of Kanchenjunga. His feet treaded on rocky ledges, next to which small plants struggled to survive. David looked around and felt ready to spend the rest of his days here. “If there could still be Joan’s cooking here, it would be heaven,” he smiled, remembering the culinary variety at his father’s house.

He began to remember some little things from his own life. They were episodes completely forgotten and unimportant. He played them over in his mind and was surprised that he remembered them with such clarity. For example, he remembered taking a coding exam and passing off someone else’s work as his own. His heart clenched for a moment. He felt a real pain in the chest and an unpleasant taste in the mouth. Then the memory flashed back to him and a few others carrying a girl who had fainted on the Tube in London right in the rush hour crowd. David remembered what he was doing, what the girl looked like and all the people in their path, but could not remember a single thought he had at that moment. “Or maybe there were no thoughts?” he thought.

David stopped and took out a small notebook and a pencil and began to write:

“When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was express myself and feel the world. Where is that now? There was no + and -. There was balance. Maybe unhappiness is just the force of that balance. It just wants to tell us, ‘Stop taking, it’s time to give’.”

David looked at the tape and remembered how he had decided to sell everything and leave. It all seemed far in the past now. How had he had the guts to do such a thing? He didn’t quite understand it either. Had he chosen it, or was he just reacting to the circumstances? Maybe it was the monotonous work, the long hours that forced him to do it. Forced him to quit the job, to move out of his apartment, to leave London. How did he end up on the other side of the world? Amazingly, the trip seemed like complete madness to him when he was at his father’s house. But now it all – what’s around and what’s inside – seems so logical and so singularly true.

There was a buzzing sound from the bag and a little later the music of his phone. David froze in place, unsure of what was happening. He looked behind him and listened. The sound was intensifying.

“What the hell?” he dropped his bag from his shoulders.

He fumbled for his phone, surprised that he had forgotten to turn it off. All it said on the screen was ‘Incoming Call’. No phone number, no name from the address book. “How is there even network service here?” He swiped the screen to accept the call and held it to his ear. A loud ring and rattle came from the speaker. David abruptly pulled the phone away from his ear and clutched at the pain. He tried to drop the call, but there was no way he could do it. The phone was unresponsive. He turned it off with a button and stomped his foot in pain.

“Shit,” David sat down on the ground, “what was this all about?”

He rubbed his temple and massaged his ear, wondering what it was. He thought maybe it was some kind of magnetic field from the iron ore or something. He looked at his hand and saw that there was blood on the fingers. His thoughts stopped dramatically. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, tore part of it off, put it in his ear, and walked onward until a fright found him among those mountains. His head was buzzing, but he didn’t want to lose the spirit that had come to him that morning. The steps became less smooth, and the philosophical thoughts faded away.

“Balance, you say?” he thought. “Will see.”

David quickened his stride, kicking rocks in frustration.

Part 2 – Chapter 16

“Let’s get to the point,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, as organizer, and he looked expectantly at Charles Bolden. “Charley, tell us, what’s going on?” changing his tone to a friendly one, the head of the European agency asked. “Why NASA gives no response to our inquiries?”

Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, looked at him with a tired smile. He looked around the large room, where about a hundred people from all over the world were sitting. There were representatives of the European Union, several top officials from the United States, China, and Russia. Charles Bolden turned on his microphone and cleared his throat.

“Well, folks,” he began, “here’s the deal. I can’t explain everything, but I’ll try to tell you what we’ve been able to recover. We launched two Voyagers in ’77. Both are still in service and our stations are still getting their signals. The crafts are performing better than we could have even imagined. They completed their mission years ago and are now moving away from the solar system by inertia, as we call it. The project was not without difficulties. On the approach to Uranus, Voyager 2 had an emergency situation. The signal was lost, and we thought we’d lost it. But then the signal came back.”

“No signal? Can you explain?” someone at the table asked.

“I have many versions of this incident, and the official NASA position is one of the memory clusters was damaged. That’s right, the device was damaged, but how it happened we can’t explain. The fact is that according to the data we were able to reconstruct, it turns out that the device was not moving in space for about 36 minutes.”

“Charley, didn’t move in space?” Jean-Jacques Dordain clarified.

“Yes,” Charles Bolden swiped his face, “it stopped.”

People in the hall began to look at each other and murmured.

“Have I got that right?” looking around the hall, Mr. Dordain said. “Voyager 2 stopped for 36 minutes on approach to Uranus? You mean… stopped at all?”