Reckless Faith Read online

  Their manner was far too calm for Christie’s liking. She was hardly reassured.

  “That is not a meteorite,” she said.

  “You figured that, huh?” Ari said.

  “What is it?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” began John, “but it came down from space last night. We discovered how to interact with it and we’ve been learning from each other.”

  “What do you mean, came down from space? How have you been talking to it.?”

  Handprints appeared on the surface of the orb. John approached it. There were four prints instead of three.

  “It would be easier if we could show you,” John said. “Guys, it wants all four of us to touch it this time.”

  “This is crazy,” said Christie. “I’m not getting near that thing.”

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Ray said. “We’ve been interacting with it and we’re fine.”

  Ray walked over and put his hand on the orb.

  “See?” said John. “It’s okay. We need to place our hands on it in order to talk to it.”

  “This is why you wanted me up here? I can see why you lied to me. I don’t think I want to be part of this, whatever the hell is going on here.”

  “Christie,” began Ray, “there’s something going on here of great importance. We don’t understand what it is yet, but we need your help. There are questions being asked that we can’t answer. Only you can help us.”

  “I don’t think so,” Christie said. “You can find someone else to sucker. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  Christie made a step back towards the cabin.

  “Put your hand on the orb,” said Ari, producing John’s Beretta from her waistband.

  “Jesus, Ari, what the hell?” shouted John.

  “Lower the weapon, Ari!” Ray yelled.

  “You people are crazy,” said Christie. “This whole thing is crazy. What are you trying to do with me?”

  “Call it positive reinforcement,” said Ari, “now do as I say.”

  “Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything,” said John.

  “For God’s sake, Ari,” said Ray, “is this the impression we want to make on visitors from another planet?”

  “Seth doesn’t know his ass from his elbow,” Ari said. “He only understands what happens inside there. I, for one, am sick of playing this game with the esteemed professor here. Do us all a favor, quit giving us this bullshit, and put your hand on the orb.”

  John stormed over to Ari. “I won’t have this kind of behavior, Ari! You cannot point a weapon at an innocent woman! If you do this we’ll never be able to trust you with a weapon again.”

  Ari smirked. “Isn’t it a bit late now?”

  John lowered his voice a bit. “No, it’s not. I want Christie’s help just as much as you. But this has to be her decision. We can’t force her to do anything against her will. That’s a crime and it’s not right.”

  Ari sighed. She gestured in capitulation, and allowed John to take the Beretta. John handed off the pistol to Ray and turned to Christie.

  “I’m sorry about this, Christie. We’re all a little strung out over this. I hope you can understand why we had to lie to you to get you up here. The lies stop here. This orb is some sort of intelligence from beyond our knowledge. It says it needs our help. And we need yours.”

  “I think you’ll understand that I’m having a hard time trusting you people,” Christie said.

  “Yes. First of all, no more intimidation.” John drew the Glock. “Ray, take the pistols inside and come back, please.”

  “Christ, everybody’s got a gun.”

  Ray headed back through the trees.

  “That’s got nothing to do with this,” said John. “Look, this orb contains an entity. Last night we interacted with it and began to learn from each other. It appears to be learning our language and how we operate. It asked us a question and we can’t provide the answer.”

  “Where is Umber,” said Ari. “It wants us to locate its home.”

  Christie took a step closer. “That’s what you were looking for in the textbook. What made you think that’s where the answer was?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” said John, “but the orb showed us where the answer was, or that we already had the answer and that we needed to look in the book to remember it.”

  “And the answer is the Large Magellanic Cloud?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping.”

  John looked at the orb. There were still four handprints on it.

  “If the answer is more complicated than that, then we might need you to help answer it,” said Ari.

  “How do I know that you’re not still lying to me?” asked Christie.

  “I don’t know,” said John, “I guess you’ll just have to take a chance.”

  Ray returned from the cabin.

  “Weapons have been stowed,” he said.

  John gestured towards Ray. “Christie, Ray is a police officer. He didn’t know that we were bringing you and he didn’t know that we lied to you. Don’t hold him responsible for our actions.”

  “That’s true,” said Ray. “I was quite surprised to see you get out of my truck.”

  “Listen,” began John, “if you want to leave, okay. Ray will drive you home. You can even file a report with the police against us if you choose. We won’t stop you. Just please help us first. Take a look at what’s going on here and then make up your mind.”

  Christie put her hands on her hips. “All right. I’ll try it. But only because I suspect the three of you will bury me if I don’t.”

  “Thank you. Guys, let’s do it.”

  John and Ari put their hands on the orb. Ray joined them.

  “Come on, it’s peer pressure,” said Ari, joining the others, “you can’t resist.”

  “This is insane,” Christie said, and planted her palm on the sphere.

  There was darkness. Christie thought that someone had thrown a bag over her head. She grasped at her face, and found it unimpeded. She took a step forward and her foot banged into something.

  “Ow, crap,” she heard herself say.

  “Christie, are you here?”

  It was John’s voice. Christie turned her head around. Something was becoming visible.

  “Where are we this time?” said Ari.

  Christie realized that her eyes were adjusting to the dark. A large oblong shape loomed before her. She stepped back, then recognized it. It was a Zeiss projector.

  “We’re... in a planetarium,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ray.

  “You’re right,” said John. “When did we all go to the planetarium?”

  “We didn’t,” said Ari.

  “Not together, anyway,” said Ray. “Did you ever go, Ari?”

  “Yeah, with Silas.”

  “So we’ve all been here, at some point,” John said.

  “How did we get here?” asked Christie. She could see the others in the slowly dissolving shadows.

  “It’s an illusion,” began John, “a memory. This is what happened before, only we were in a pub we all used to like.”

  “Hello,” said someone. The voice was loud and seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  “Hello Seth,” said John and Ray.

  “What’s that?” asked Christie.

  “That’s the entity,” said John. “We’ve been calling it Seth for lack of a better name.”

  Christie’s heart leaped as she caught sight of Seth. He was standing behind the Zeiss projector control panel. He had been speaking into the microphone for the public address system.

  “Hello, Seth,” Christie said.

  “You are new,” said Seth.

  “Yes, I’m Christie. How are you?”

  “I am Seth.”

  “He’s a little slow on the uptake,” said Ari.

  Christie walked towards Seth. As she approached him, Seth smiled.

  “He’s so... strange,” Christie said.

  “We thin
k it’s a representation of the three of us,” said John, “sort of morphed together into one form.”

  “It’s more than that. He’s too perfect. I think he’s more than just a visual combination.”

  “Why?”

  “John has green eyes,” Christie began, “Ari has black hair, and Ray has connected earlobes. Seth has them all.”

  “You think he’s an actual representation of our... our, um, child?”

  “Sort of.”

  “So is he really a he?” Ari asked, smiling.

  “Are you male or female, Seth?” asked Christie.

  “I am Seth.”

  “You wanna get him to strip down?” asked Ari.

  Seth pressed some keys on the control panel. The Zeiss projector lit up and began to move. A starfield of the night sky appeared on the overhead dome. As soon as this happened, the dome seemed to melt away. Christie could clearly see the Milky Way.

  “I guess he doesn’t care to discuss it,” said Ray.

  “Look at this,” Christie said, stunned. “This is far more than the Zeiss projector is capable of.”

  “Find me,” said Seth.

  “You’re in the Large Magellanic Cloud,” John said.

  “Where?”

  It was a truly odd thing for Seth to say, since he’d said the word with much more emotion in it than usual.

  “Right ascension five hours, twenty-three point six minutes,” said Christie. “Declination negative sixty-nine degrees, forty-five minutes.”

  “Damn, you’re good,” said Ray.

  “I looked it up in the car.”

  The Zeiss projector whirred and spun around. The sky moved in a rather disorientating way. Christie was enraptured.

  “Quite impressive,” said John.

  “We should be seeing the southern hemisphere. There it is.”

  Christie pointed straight up. In the center of the sky was a faint blur. The sky began to move again and started to get closer to the cloud. The feeling of movement was inescapable this time and all four of them were forced to sit down. The movement stopped when the cloud filled the entire hemisphere. The upper right hand corner of the cloud was particularly spectacular.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Ari.

  “How close are we?” asked Ray.

  “I don’t know,” replied Christie. “This looks like at least a hundred magnification. But it’s not magnified. It’s as if we were actually that close, maybe ten or twenty thousand light years.”

  “Home,” said Seth.

  “Nice place you got here,” said Ray.

  “One more test.”

  The dome went black, and then everything disappeared. A shape materialized. It looked like a racquetball with a toothpick sticking out of it. At the end of the toothpick was what looked like a smaller ball of Styrofoam.

  “What the hell is this?” Ari’s voice said.

  Christie laughed. “This is my ninth grade science fair project. It’s supposed to represent a hydrogen atom. One proton and one electron.”

  The image changed. This time, there were two Styrofoam balls sticking out.

  “I never did this one,” said Christie, “but it’s obviously helium.”

  The image changed to three balls.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but if this keeps going like this we’re going to be shit out of luck before too long.”

  “Good thing I’m here,” said John’s voice. “I got an A-plus in high school chemistry. That’s got to be lithium.”

  The pictures showing continued to grow in complexity. John rattled off the names of the elements, singing a familiar tune as he did so.

  “Beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus... uh, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium...”

  The image did not change.

  “I think you got that one wrong,” said Ray’s voice.

  “Bullshit, I memorized up to zinc for my science project. That’s why I’m singing, ‘Row, row your boat.’ That’s how I remembered it. Potassium is after argon.”

  “Count the electrons,” said Christie. “There are twenty of them.”

  “Ha! Seth, you bastard, you skipped a couple. Argon, potassium... calcium!”

  The image changed.

  “Nice one,” Ray said.

  John began the song again. “Scandium, titanium, vanadium... chromium,”

  “Gently down the stream,” said Ari.

  “Do you mind? Um, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

  The darkness melted away, and they were back in the woods.

  Ari blinked in the brightness of the sun. Everything looked exactly as it had before. Apparently, once again no time had passed inside the orb. Ari looked over at Ray.

  “Was that it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ray replied. “Christie?”

  Christie rubbed her eyes. “I guess so. I wonder why we stopped at zinc.”

  “Maybe those are all the elements that Seth needs for... John!”

  The others looked down. John was lying on the ground, his eyes closed.

  “John!” Ray said, kneeling down beside him.

  “Is he okay?”

  Ari took John’s hand. “John, are you all right?”

  “He’s still breathing,” said Ray. “Maybe he...”

  John sat upright so fast his head almost collided with Ray’s. His eyes were wide open and he looked shocked.

  “John?” said Ray. “Are you okay?”

  “I am Seth,” he said.

  __________

  Dana Andrews yawned. It was way too beautiful of a Sunday to be trapped inside, but it was an imprisonment of her own choosing. She was intent to review audio file number 315, which was recorded on Friday, but she had to wait. It was a rather unremarkable file other than it came from her favorite part of the sky, among the constellation Cygnus. It also appeared to have a repeating pattern. This by itself was also not remarkable. There was something about this one, however, that caught her attention. She couldn’t stay on Friday because she was taking her mother to the movies. It was something with cowboys, she remembered, and it had Kevin Costner in it.

  Saturday was a washout, literally. Dana had laundry to do and her bathroom was in desperate need of cleaning. After that she didn’t have the energy to drive to the lab, and crashed in front of the television for the rest of the day.

  Sunday morning she had awoken with renewed vigor, and had rushed off to work after a quick shower and teeth brushing. She was also able to wear casual clothing, which was a huge bonus. Of course, it was unlikely that there would be anyone else there on a Sunday morning. Except for Levi.

  Levi Marks was a colleague of Dana’s. He shared her zeal for work, and often devoted his personal time to the research. Dana would hesitate to call him a friend, but they were affable enough to each other. The only time Dana tried to open up to him, he’d wandered away quietly while Dana informed her computer monitor about some of her mother’s more annoying attributes.

  Dana and Levi worked for a local chapter of the American Space Transmission Research Association, which drew it’s funds from the equally local Lehigh University. This meant loads of college kids visiting and participating on a regular basis. It didn’t bother Dana in the least, but it left Levi wishing for more privacy.

  When Dana arrived that morning, therefore, she was surprised that Levi wasn’t there. She expected he would arrive shortly. As the afternoon wore on, Dana had forgotten Levi and was engrossed in studying file 315. She had converted the wave patterns into a more useful visual format, and listened to the actual audio over and over again while she examined the pictures. There was a definite pattern to it, but it wasn’t anything she could identify herself.

  That meant a much more time consuming process of turning the data into a form usable by an algorithm program. That program would search for more recognizable patterns much more quickly than a human ever
could, since it was programmed to search for binary information. Levi was better at using it and Dana began to hope that he’d make an appearance soon.

  Dana’s computer beeped. She had an incoming e-mail. Dana saved her work and opened the message. It was from a very small chapter of ASTRA operating outside of Atlanta, Georgia. It was addressed to all other ASTRA members and was had an audio file attached. The audio file was labeled “interesting.mp3.”

  “Hello, Dana,” said Levi.

  Dana swiveled around in her chair to face the man. Levi was about forty years old, and bore a full beard. He always reminded Dana of a cartoon character, in a good way.

  “Good afternoon, Levi. What have you been up to?”

  “This and that. You?”

  “I’ve just been reviewing one of the audio files we collected Friday. It’s gripping my mind.”

  “Nice.”

  Levi, in typical fashion, walked away without any ceremony. Dana turned back to her computer and opened the e-mail.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Here is an audio file that I recorded on Friday night. We can confirm that it originated in the area of Ursa Minor. It has a pattern to it that is interesting, to say the least.

  Dana opened the attachment and sent the file to her mp3 player. She clicked on play, and a very familiar sound met her ears. Dana stood up rapidly, knocking her chair across the room. Levi leaned over from his desk and caught it before it rolled into a network server.

  “Are you planning on a repeat of last year’s Christmas party?” he said.

  “Listen to this, Levi! This is the exact same signal that we recorded on Friday.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Yeah, but this one came from the Atlanta stations.”

  “Good. That means that they weren’t asleep at the switch.”

  Dana crossed the room to Levi.

  “Yeah, but they recorded a different origin point!”

  “That is interesting.”

  Levi stood up and walked over to Dana’s computer.

  “Do you know what this means?”

  “Yes,” said Levi. “It means that the origin point was not Cygnus.”

  “Exactly. They recorded it as coming from Ursa Minor.”