Transmission

He smiled when he saw her; he hadn’t realized how much he missed seeing her face.

She smiled back.

“Hey, stranger,” she said. “They putting you through the mill?”

“Every test you can imagine.”

“Being poked and prodded must get pretty bad,” Luna said. “But it probably means you’re getting looked at by more doctors than you would otherwise. That has to be good, right?”

“I don’t think it means that they can do anything for me,” Kevin said. He’d thought about this, briefly, but decided he couldn’t afford that kind of hope when it came to his illness. He knew what was going to happen. “Most of them aren’t even that kind of doctor.”

“But some of them must be, and I bet that if there is any research into…” Luna looked down, and Kevin guessed that she’d written it down so she wouldn’t forget it, “… leukodystrophies, it’s going to be somewhere near you.”

“If there is, I haven’t heard about it,” Kevin said. No one had exactly come up to him and told him that there was suddenly a cure for what he had.

“And have you been looking?” Luna asked. She had her determined expression on, the one that meant she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“I’ve been too busy trying to translate messages from an alien species,” Kevin pointed out.

“Okay,” Luna said, “as excuses go, I’ll admit that’s pretty good. Just think, when they come here and say ‘Take me to your leader,’ you’ll be the only one who can translate, so you’ll be there. Your name will be in the history books.”

“And when did you last pay attention in history class?” Kevin countered. “I remember trying to help you study for tests, remember?”

“Well, maybe I’d pay more attention if there were more aliens in them.”

“Kevin?” Professor Brewster was standing there, looking impatient. “When you’re ready, the signal is waiting.”

“Looks like I have to go,” Kevin said to Luna.

“I miss you,” she said, and there was a kind of wistful note to it that wasn’t normally there in Luna’s voice.

“Well, maybe you could visit,” Kevin said, but then he caught sight of Professor Brewster’s expression. “I have to go.”

“You should be careful about what you say,” Professor Brewster said when Kevin hung up. “Our work here is supposed to be confidential.”

“I trust Luna,” Kevin said.

“And if all of this turns out to be nonsense, then it damages the reputation that we have worked so hard to build up, which in turn will affect our funding.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Kevin insisted. Why couldn’t Professor Brewster understand that? “I see this.”

“Apparently,” Professor Brewster said. “Although given your condition…”

Kevin stood up. Right then, he felt tired, and not just because of the illness that was slowly eating away at his brain. He felt tired of all this, of not being taken seriously.

“You’re just determined to dismiss this whatever I do,” he said. “I managed to translate the message.”

“Apparently.” That word again. “That reminds me, though. There’s no reason to believe that you started listening at the start of these signals, so we want to have you listen to our archive of signals from other sectors, and see if any more trigger sudden translations.”

He said that as if he hadn’t just barged in, and they weren’t having an argument about it. He said it as if it were already decided that Kevin would do it. Kevin stood there, ready to tell him no. Ready to just walk away.

He couldn’t, though, and not just because he was thirteen, while this was some eminent scientist who probably knew what he was talking about. He couldn’t risk not hearing what the aliens had to say.

“All right,” Kevin said.

Professor Brewster took him, not to the supercomputer pit this time, but to a small lab space where there was nothing but a plain white table, a pair of equally plain headphones, and a pane of two-way glass that suggested dozens of scientists might be waiting just beyond.

“Go inside, put the headphones on, and we’ll see if any of the signals spark translations,” Professor Brewster said in a voice that suggested he knew what the likely outcome would be.

*

The next few hours were among the most boring of Kevin’s life, and that included the time he’d spent in math class. Whoever was in the other room played him noise after noise, signal after signal, all presumably interpreted from light patterns or electromagnetic discharges. Kevin expected one of them to spark something at any moment, but there was nothing, and nothing again, and…

“If anyone receives this, more communications will follow,” he said as he heard one. It hardly sounded like his voice anymore, as though something were speaking through him. It just seemed natural to say it as the sounds hit his ears.

There seemed to be instant activity behind the glass, and Phil’s voice came in on his headphones.

“What was that, Kevin?”

“That last signal, I think it means to wait for more,” Kevin said.

“You’re sure?”

Kevin didn’t know how to answer that. It wasn’t as though he was any kind of expert on what was happening. He probably knew less than the scientists trying to make sense of it all. He just translated what he heard, relying on his altered brain to understand.

“Maybe if we try for more signals taken from that area,” Phil’s voice said over the headphones, and Kevin couldn’t tell if he was talking to him, or himself, or to other scientists.

Either way, more signals followed. Some were just noise. Others, though…

“We are coming, prepare to receive us.”

They were all variations on the same theme, the same message, although none of them seemed to say anything useful. Kevin found himself wondering how long these messages had been pumping out into space, waiting for someone to listen to them. Maybe they’d been striking the Earth for months, even years, and it was only now that someone was able to understand.

Phil seemed to have the same idea. He came in, wearing what looked very much like the same Hawaiian shirt as the day before, looking excited.

“These signals… some of them go back months, maybe longer, all from the region of space we associate with the Trappist 1 system. That means that, if they were sent using light, they’ve taken almost forty years to arrive. And you’re the first person to be able to understand them.” Unlike Dr. Brewster, Phil seemed more than happy about the prospect. He sounded truly excited.

“I think your illness must have changed your brain in ways we don’t understand,” he said. “I think it must have given you the capacity to tune into this in ways we can’t. It would explain why we can’t see anything beyond the progress of your illness. Your illness is doing this.”

Kevin smiled tightly. “So I’m basically a freak.”

“But a very important one,” Phil said with a smile of his own. “We might have missed understanding this completely. More than that, it sounds as though there’s a bigger message coming, something so important that they wanted to be sure no one would miss it.”

Kevin thought about the countdown. It was getting faster.

Now, he suspected, he knew what it was counting down to.

The only way to test that was to keep going, working in the institute’s testing lab with his headphones on, listening as they pumped in the feed of signals from their listening equipment. He sat there and did his best to translate the signals as Phil sent them through, one by one.

“Nothing with that one,” Kevin said, shaking his head.

“I’d have thought there would be something,” Phil replied, his voice sounding in Kevin’s ears as he worked on the other side of a pane of clear glass.

Kevin had thought so too, with the countdown pulsing so fast inside him. Kevin could feel the pulsing, hummingbird fast within him now, impossible to ignore and suggesting that whatever was coming would be here soon. He was tired of waiting, and tired of people staring at him, and sometimes just tired.

“Kevin should take a break.” His mother’s voice, from outside the room. Kevin was glad she was there. He wasn’t sure what that meant for her work, but he was glad she was there.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca, Dr. Brewster was pretty clear that we need to keep feeding Kevin the signal this close to the end of his countdown.”

“And are you going to listen to him, or to me?”

Kevin suspected he might be about to get a break. He smiled at that thought. A more worrying one replaced it. What if nothing happened? What if he sat here day after day, and the countdown reached zero without anything happening? What if they’d put this effort in and it was all in vain? How would they all react to that?

A worse thought occurred to him, a thought that made Kevin screw his eyes shut in an attempt to push it away. It didn’t work. What if this was all his illness? What if the countdown wasn’t to a message but to some kind of seizure? What if that too rapid beat was his own heart, or the blood vessels around his brain getting ready to burst? The people of the institute had gathered around Kevin like a prophet about to speak, but what if he really was just dying?

Then the signal came, rushing through him.

And he knew the time had come.

***

Kevin could see people rushing to get into the room on the other side, obviously wanting to be there as the message came in. He barely paid any attention to them. The message was too important for that.

“If you are hearing this,” Kevin said, translating automatically even though he didn’t know how he was doing this, “our world is gone.”

He heard the gasps outside as people listened in and realized some of what it must mean. A few of the scientists there started jotting down notes, and Kevin heard them talking in the background.

“That would mean that there haven’t been any aliens for at least forty years now,” one said.

“If there are,” another put in. “We only have the kid’s word for the translation.”

The others ignored him. They seemed as caught up in the moment as Kevin was.

The message kept going, and Kevin kept translating. “We are sending out these messages to preserve what we can of our people, and to ensure that our knowledge does not die.”

The signal seemed to intensify, and now it was like a stream that Kevin couldn’t have begun to hold back. There were only the strange sounds of the alien language, and the words that came as he translated them almost automatically.

“Our planet was one of seven, with three inhabited. The colonies collapsed first. Home was destroyed in the fires that cleansed it. This is our story, our record. Perhaps hearing it will help others to avoid the same fate as us.”

Kevin spoke the words almost without registering the signal that triggered them. The signal was a complex, chattering thing, and if he concentrated, he could just about make out the clicks and buzzes that made it up. Mostly, though, he just got the meaning, pouring straight into his mind as he listened.

It felt as though just keeping his brain locked in with the signal was an effort, and Kevin could feel a bead of sweat forming above his eyes as he worked to keep a grip on it.

“We must send these messages carefully, only a piece at a time, but if you listen, you will learn.”

The signal cut out. Kevin waited and kept waiting, listening for more, but there didn’t seem to be anything else.

Finally, Kevin looked up. He could see Phil and his mother staring back at him from beyond the glass, but there were others there, plenty of others. Professor Brewster and Dr. Levin were both there, along with as many staff as could fit into the room beyond. He could see the shock on so many of their faces, and he could guess why: they hadn’t dared to believe this was real. They’d thought that it would turn into nothing.

This, though, was a long way from nothing.

He could also see their other reason for the shock: they clearly expected the message to continue.

No one had expected it to fall into silence.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kevin sat very still in Professor Brewster’s office while around him, adults tried to work out what all this meant, and what they should do next. Mostly, they did it by talking too much.

Professor Brewster looked surprisingly pleased for once. “That was very impressive, Kevin. I never thought I would see the day. Actual contact with another world! Although we need to be careful, of course. Consider the alternate possibilities.”

How did Professor Brewster manage to sound both excited and skeptical at the same time?

“You don’t believe it?” Dr. Levin asked.

“We have to consider things carefully,” Professor Brewster said. “After all, we don’t hear the messages directly, only get translations through a boy who is suffering from a degenerative illness.”

“You still think I’m making things up,” Kevin said.

“I’m not saying that,” Professor Brewster said. “Still… direct contact…”

“I don’t think it was direct contact,” Kevin said. “It felt… almost like a recorded message.”

“If anything, that makes it more plausible,” Professor Brewster said. “Because a signal like that would have to travel for years, even moving at the highest speeds. The Trappist 1 system is almost forty light years away, after all.”

Kevin knew that. They’d told him before the message had come. He and Phil had discussed it, and he wasn’t sure he liked it that Professor Brewster was saying it like it was something he’d just worked out.

Besides, in spite of all that, a part of Kevin had been expecting something else, something live.

“I don’t think I got all of it,” he said. “I think there’s more.”

“That doesn’t matter, Kevin,” his mother said. “The important thing is that you are safe.”

“And because you’re safe,” Professor Brewster added, “you’ll be able to pick up more.”

The vision had promised that there was more to come. A whole series of messages. A chance to learn everything there was to learn about another world, and Kevin was the key to it.

Some of the others seemed just as excited as he felt.

“We have to publish this,” Dr. Levin said.

Professor Brewster held up a hand. “Elise, it’s important that we aren’t too hasty about that. We have the initial messages, certainly, but we need more before we involve anyone else.”

“How much more?” Dr. Levin asked. Kevin could guess why she sounded so frustrated. She’d put her whole life into looking for aliens. Now she had the proof, and of course she would want to shout about it. She wanted people to know, and Kevin… well, he kind of agreed with her.

“Why can’t we tell people?” Kevin asked. “Why can’t we let them know what we found? If I were out there, I’d want to know if people had found aliens.”

“It’s too early,” Professor Brewster insisted. “We should have a full set of data before we announce anything. That way—”

“That way no one can say you’re making it up?” Kevin guessed.

To his surprise, his mother spoke up on Professor Brewster’s side. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea to say anything now, Kevin. We’ve all seen what you can do, but other people…”

“You think they wouldn’t believe me?” Kevin asked.

Professor Brewster nodded. “I think people will need a lot of proof before they believe something like this,” he said. “We must be careful to demonstrate to them that this is more than just your imagination, and actually represents an alien communication.”

“But I’m translating it,” Kevin insisted.

“You appear to be,” Professor Brewster said. “We need to establish the patterns between what you’re saying and the signals we receive. In the meantime, if we keep it to ourselves, it will prevent a lot of problems.”

“What kind of problems?” Kevin asked. He couldn’t see how something this amazing could be a problem. The news that people weren’t alone in the universe sounded incredible to him.

“We do a lot of research here that is considered secret for reasons of national security,” Professor Brewster said. “I imagine that my superiors would consider this one of those secrets.”

“So you’re worried about your bosses?” Kevin asked. It didn’t seem like a good enough reason to keep from telling people.

“There’s also the question of how people might react,” Professor Brewster said. “People might panic.”

“We understand,” Kevin’s mother said, putting a hand on Kevin’s shoulder.

Kevin didn’t understand, though. He didn’t see how people would panic at the news that they weren’t alone in the universe. To him, it seemed like just about the coolest thing it was possible to learn. He looked over to Dr. Levin, at least expecting support from her. But it seemed that even she was convinced for now.

“I suppose if we wait a while,” she said, “that would let us receive more messages.”

“They said I could only get a part of the information at once,” Kevin said. “Why would they do that? Why not just give it all at once?”

“Maybe they had to do it that way,” Dr. Levin said. “Perhaps they had power restrictions, or maybe they wanted to maximize the odds of someone hearing some of it.”

“Or maybe they just have that much to send,” Professor Brewster suggested. “Like splitting up files when sending email so that the receiver doesn’t have to download them in one huge attempt.”

That made a kind of sense, although Kevin wasn’t sure he liked being referred to as just the receiver. It made him sound as though he was a machine rather than a human being, useful only for what he could do. His mother, or Luna, would never see him like that. If Luna were here, she would see how much it hurt him.

“Either way,” Dr. Levin went on hurriedly, “I don’t think this is the end of it. What do you think, Kevin? When do you think there might be more?”

Kevin could hear the hope in her voice. This was the kind of moment that her whole career had been working toward, after all. After so long wondering, and maybe hoping, who would be satisfied with just one communication? He would want more, if he were her. He did want more. He wanted to hear everything the aliens had to say.

Kevin tried to feel for any sense of the message in its aftermath. The constant pulse of the countdown to the messages wasn’t there anymore, but he still had a sense of expectation somewhere deep inside of him that there would be more. The aliens had said that, hadn’t they?

“I think there will be,” he said. It was strange, having so many adults hanging on his words, actually listening to him. He suspected not many thirteen-year-olds got that.

“Then we need to get Kevin back listening to signals,” Professor Brewster said.

“David,” Dr. Levin said, “Kevin has only just finished translating the first signal. He’s also very ill. It isn’t right to ask him to plunge back into that without giving him some time to recover.”

“But the information—” Professor Brewster began.

“No one cares about that more than I do,” Dr. Levin said. “I’m not the director over at SETI for nothing. But I also know that you don’t learn things by pushing thirteen-year-old boys too hard. Give him time, David. We can record any signals that come from that area of space in the meantime. That will give us a record of them, too.”

To Kevin’s surprise, Professor Brewster seemed to back down. He hadn’t been sure the tall scientist would listen to Dr. Levin on this.

“All right,” Professor Brewster said. “We’ll give Kevin time to recover. It will allow us to work out the best way to work with this information. But I expect results.”

***

Kevin sat listening, trying to pick through the silence for something more. Around him, he could see scientists waiting, some with tablets poised, others with cameras. He could feel the pressure there to perform for them, to do this on command, when the truth was that he could only wait.

There was a kind of rhythm to the waiting, sitting with a set of portable headphones plugged into the stream from the radio telescope. He could feel himself filling with anticipation before the bursts of transmission coming, the feeling like a pulsing in his brain that built in an early warning signal that sent scientists scrambling to record it.

It came now, and Kevin looked up.

“I think there’s a message on the way,” he said.

It was all that was needed to send scientists hurrying to prepare, most of them moving faster than they moved at any other time. Even so, they were barely in place before the words came through.

“Our civilization started simply, on the fringes of our planet’s oceans,” Kevin translated. “We spread, and we learned, over many centuries. We built homes. We built cities. We built—”

The transmission cut off, as suddenly as it had started. Kevin waited a moment or two more, in case it would begin again, but it didn’t. That seemed to be what it was now: brief bursts and long pauses, with no sign of when it would start again.

Scientists stood around to record everything he was able to give to them, while they made Kevin write down what he could just in case the impressions there were different. Trust scientists to find a way to make something like this feel like homework.

It wasn’t easy, and not just because some of the researchers seemed to be determined to suck all the fun out of it. Translating took a mental effort, so that Kevin’s brain buzzed with it, and he could only stand unsteadily afterward. He hadn’t expected this to be physically this hard. Then again, he hadn’t expected any of this at all.

“This isn’t good for you,” Phil said when he saw how shaky Kevin was. “Take your time. Don’t push harder than you can push. Not in your condition.”

His condition was what made Kevin want to get all he could. It was hard to think about, but how much time did he have now? How many messages would he receive before his brain changed to the point where he couldn’t understand them anymore? What if… what if he died before he was done? What if he couldn’t get to the end before his body and brain gave way?

It was more than that, though. Every time he sat there translating, listening through his headphones to the latest burst of information, Kevin felt as though all of this might mean something. It was a reminder that he wasn’t just a thirteen-year-old boy dying of a disease practically no one had heard of. He was doing something no one else in the history of the world had done. If all of this was for something, then that was a good thing.

“I have to keep going,” Kevin said. “We need to get all of it.”

For the most part, what Kevin managed to pull out were facts, and each one seemed to excite the scientists around him more. Some of it, like the presence of seven planets around the star, or the interlocking gravitational orbits of their moons, were things that they’d been able to work out from their observations using the telescopes available on Earth. Other parts, such as the presence of so much life, had them scratching their heads.

“We think the planets are all tidally locked,” one said. “Is there evidence of day shifting into night? If not, one side of the planets should be burning, while the other freezes.”

Kevin couldn’t tell him at first, until another message explained that yes, the planets spun, in ways that seemed to excite the scientists even more.

“We’ll have to rewrite what we know about all of this. What about the radiation exposure from being so close to the star?”

Again and again, they asked questions Kevin didn’t know the answers to. They didn’t seem to get that he didn’t have any control over what the aliens had sent in their bursts of messages. They sent what they sent, Kevin translated it, and the scientists had to scramble to try to make some kind of sense of it.

Strangely, Dr. Levin was the one person who didn’t seem to mind that.

“It’s just astonishing that they’ve chosen to communicate in this way,” she said. “They’re sending so much information about themselves, trying to preserve some understanding of who they are.”

“Who they were,” Kevin corrected her. That was one thing that the messages had been clear about. The people sending them were long gone. That was both incredibly sad and also kind of cool, knowing that he was pretty much the last link to a dead civilization.

One strange thing was how simple and factual it all was. Kevin had been kind of expecting to learn more about the culture or the languages of the beings that inhabited the planet, yet he still hadn’t seen enough of them to understand what they really were. Which of the creatures on the planet’s surface were they? Were they the chitin-shelled creatures that crawled there, or the long-necked things like scaled giraffes? Kevin’s imagination kept him expecting something humanlike and familiar, but so far he hadn’t heard any reference to it.