The Gift (5 page)

“This is interesting folks, and I don’t mean to stifle creativity but the clock is ticking. I think the most salient question is whether the targeting is intended to reach the most people or destroy as much of humanity as possible in their first strike. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?” Web asked, slightly frustrated at the academic tone of the conversation.

“It depends on their timeline," Camilla answered.

“Explain, please," Web directed.

“If they’re not in a hurry, these would not be the best targets to select in order to kill the most humans over time. I’m sure you’re all aware of the recent rapid growth in world population, but I’m not sure how much thought you’ve given it.

“For most of human history, the population of the world was measured in the tens of millions. Advances such as improved irrigation and sewage disposal increased those numbers to the hundreds of millions as recently as two thousand years ago, but it took another millennia and a half to raise the number to half a billion. Over the next five hundred years, the population tripled. Between then and now, a little over a century, the population has more than quadrupled. There are many reasons why this is so, but the primary one is the availability of energy, particularly portable energy. It is not a coincidence that the rise in the rate of population growth aligns with the increasing use of hydrocarbons as fuels. It is causal. If they destroyed our hydrocarbon sources and infrastructure, much of the world would starve to death in relatively short order; yet, they ignored major oil producing countries in favor of more populous ones.”

“So, you don’t think their intent is hostile?” Web asked.

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think this approach,” she gestured toward the map, “is the most efficient use of resources over time if their intent is to cause us harm," Camilla corrected.

“Camilla makes a very good point and also brings up another tangentially. Not only did the anomalies not target hydrocarbon infrastructure, they do not appear to be targeting infrastructure at all. If they wanted the most immediately destructive effect, wouldn’t they at least target the largest city in the selected country?” Dan asked.

“We don’t know that they haven’t. The original anomaly split into multiple smaller spheres. What’s to say the smaller spheres won’t do the same in order to achieve wider coverage?” Jack asked.

“Which one is headed toward the U.S.?” Web asked, looking at Rui.

“The one we’ve been receiving data from," Rui answered.

“The one we could be talking with," Sam said, just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

“What?” Chang asked almost before Sam finished speaking.

Doctor Chang Liu was the team’s mathematician. Although nearly everyone on the team had at least a minor in math in one of their degrees, none of them came close to the expertise Chang brought to bear in the area of game theory. Up to this point, he’d had little to do but theorize with minimal data. He, more than anyone else on the team, had been frustrated at the singular response from the anomalies in the face of all subsequent attempts to communicate. If they could establish a real dialog with the anomalies, he could begin applying his expertise in a meaningful way. Normally not an outspoken member of the team—he was more comfortable with numbers and theory and suspected his accent was thicker than people told him it was—he could become quite so when he felt his ability to contribute was being ignored.

“Sam’s talking about…” Jack began before Sam cut him off.

“What I’m talking about…” he started in a more forceful voice before Jack interrupted him, “This isn’t the time to discuss that.”

“This is precisely the time to talk about a new way to communicate with the anomalies. Why haven’t we heard about this before?” Chang asked pointedly, directing his attention to Web. Unlike Sam, Chang did not need Web in order to do the work he loved. As a result, he had not developed any habit of deference. He showed respect to everyone on the team, deference to none of them.

Web was well aware that he did not want the outcome of this event, whatever it turned out to be, to include the fact that he ignored Chang’s input. Although he was in charge of the team, he had not selected its members. All of the civilians had patrons in high places who believed their expert might be the one to make the difference should the time come. In this case, Web was inclined to believe them; if the program was actually a program and if it was designed to let us communicate with them. Two very big ‘ifs.’

“I just found out about it myself, Chang. We were discussing it while Rui was recalculating the trajectories of the anomalies, but let me be clear. We do not know that we have a way to communicate with them. We suspect,” Web looked at Sam while saying this, emphasizing the word ‘suspect,’ “that we have found a computer program within the data stream coming from ‘our’ anomaly. We do not know that it is a functional program and we do not know what it will do if we run it.”

“Then why don’t we run it and find out?” Chang asked

Web sensed he was losing control of the meeting and tried to get it back on track, “This meeting is about understanding the reasoning behind the anomalies selected impact sites.”

Chang wasn’t about to let it go. “This
team
is about handling first contact. If Sam believes he’s found a program within the data, I’m inclined to believe him. It is the reason we brought him in. As for what the program will do, there are a finite number of practical possibilities. Starting with the most obvious, there are three branches. It may attempt to do us harm, it may attempt to aid us, or it may perform a function that does not attempt to do either. The last is highly improbable because it ignores the active nature of both the anomalies' arrival and the nature of its delivery. It is also irrelevant to our discussion because it introduces neither risk nor reward into the prospect of executing the program.

“So, we are left with the first two branches. Let’s examine the scenario in which the program attempts to do harm. Assuming there are not multiple factions within the anomalies with conflicting goals, an assumption we can revisit, the nature of the program should reflect the nature of the visitors. If it is their intent to do us harm, the program is likely to be harmful. There would be no reason for it to be otherwise. If it is their intent to do us harm, they certainly possess the technical prowess to do so. Choosing not to run the program avoids the harm that decision may introduce, and may delay whatever part of the plan it was intended to aid. Is the nature of that delay likely to materially reduce the threat they could pose? No. Why? Because we did not know they existed only hours ago and they will be here mere hours from now. There simply isn’t time for it to matter.

“Now let’s examine the second branch, that the program may attempt to aid us. Working with the same assumption that there are not multiple competing factions, we are left only to ponder the nature of such aid. Unlike explicitly intended harm, intended aid can lead to unfortunate unintended harm to the recipients of such aid, but again, that is the same threat we will face in a few hours. Unless we run the program before then, we will know nothing about that risk, should it exist. Which means we will not be able to inform the NCA about the risk. Which means we would have failed one of our prime directives. It will be even worse if the reward is apportioned among the players according to how quickly they solve the problem. We could forfeit reward by overvaluing risk, again potentially denying the NCA any advantage we could have otherwise earned. This is first contact. We must accept appropriate risks to do our job.” Chang finished speaking.

The room was silent for a moment before Web spoke, “Does anyone have a counter argument?”

No one did.

“Fine. Dan, you and Sam explore that avenue. We’ll continue this discussion. Inform me immediately of your results.”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Sam paused, his finger over the button that would execute the alien program, “You want to do the honors?” He asked Dan.

“No thank you. You found it, you run it," Dan replied.

Sam pressed the button, then looked from the screen to Dan, “Well, that’s disappointing.”

“We knew it might not be a program, or a complete one," Dan responded.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just thinking of all the time we lost debating whether or not to try it. We could have been working on alternatives for the past hour.”

“It was not the kind of decision one person can make, Sam.”

“But it always comes down to one person. In bureaucracies, it just usually comes down to one person who knows much less about the problem at hand or the nature of the solution. Politicians and bureaucrats believe they’re better qualified to make decisions than the rest of us. Nothing in my life has shown that to be true. If we waited for Web to get permission, we’d end up running it too late to explore alternatives if it failed to work, like it just did, and that’s if we got permission to run it at all.” Sam stopped and took a deep breath. He realized he was taking it out on the wrong person.

“Sorry, Dan. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Don’t worry about it. We all have the right to be a bit stressed right now," Dan replied.

“Thanks.” Sam closed his eyes, took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Okay, then; back to the matter at hand. I’ve been thinking about the possibility, probability if I’m being honest with myself, that the first program we put together wouldn’t work since my conversation with Web and Jack before Rui’s meeting. I can think of three potential causes. One, I could have selected the wrong subset of data as input; two, my code could be flawed in some way; or three, the similarity of the data to the structure of a program file is coincidence. You know I don’t believe in coincidence, so let’s start with that one.

“Has your team run an analysis of the statistical probability that we’d find this pattern repeating randomly as frequently as we’re seeing it?” Sam asked.

“We have. It’s highly improbable that the sequence would appear as frequently as it does randomly. That does not preclude the sequence having a meaning to the sender that differs from how we would interpret it. We’re assuming they are intelligent enough to send us a message we are capable of understanding in time to matter. That seems logical to us. It may not seem as logical to them. They could also be overestimating our intelligence, as humbling as that thought may be," Dan replied.

“There’s nothing we can do about it if they’ve overestimated us, so I don’t see any upside to worrying about it and I will leave pursuit of other interpretations of the pattern in these sequences to your team. I vote the two of us ignore option three.”

“I agree.”

“On to option one, then. I think this is where we’re likely to find the problem. There’s a tremendous amount of data and I did not spend a lot of time selecting the first chunk of it to evaluate. I’ll run a few copies of my existing script against my lower probability candidates, but I’d like you to select another dozen or so sets that you think are promising. I’ll run the program against them as well while you look for more, or for a better method of finding higher quality sets. My selection algorithm is in the code I sent you.”

“Last and perhaps least, option two, my code could be flawed. I’ll start reviewing it right after I update Web, but I think you should have someone on your team do so as well.”

“I agree. I’ll get someone on it before I start looking for better candidate sections of the message.”

“Can you think of anything else we should be doing right now?” Sam asked.

“No, but you’ll have to tell me about that conversation later.”

“If we all survive the next few hours, I promise I’ll catch you up on office gossip," Sam replied.

Web’s door was closed. Normally, Sam would consider his obligation met and wait for Web to find him. Under the circumstances, he chose a different course and knocked. Sam did not want to give Web an excuse to kick him off of the team.

“Enter.”

Sam did. Web was seated behind his desk. Jack was with him. They both stopped talking and looked at Sam as he entered, waiting for him to brief them.

Sam stopped a few feet into the room, “We attempted to execute the program. It didn’t run.”

Web let the silence linger before asking, “What do you propose for next steps?”

“Dan is looking for portions of the message that may serve as better input to my script. He’s also going to have a member of his team review my code. I’ll be doing that as well. As soon as I get back, I’ll start the process again and try the new programs as we build them.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Web asked.

“I think it’s a continuation of a decision that’s already been made," Sam replied.

“For better or worse, you’re right about that, Sam. Keep me informed.”

Sam may now be a civilian, but he recognized a dismissal when he heard one. He left without another word.

Sam looked at Dan in frustration, “This isn’t working.”

“No, it’s not," an equally frustrated Dan replied.

They had been working on building a functional program for several hours. Throughout that time, each of them had had what Dan liked to call mini-epiphanies. At first, it had been exciting. As the clock ticked down and they continued to fail, the reality of the stakes in play became an increasingly heavy burden upon each of them. It was too late to bring in more help. There just wasn’t time to explain all the steps they’d taken to get to where they were. It was up to them. They knew it and so did everyone else. Unfortunately, they were running out of ideas.

“Maybe they did overestimate us," Sam said, almost to himself.

“I don’t think so. Let’s talk it through again," Dan replied.

“Okay, but let’s do it in the break room. I need to get away from here for a while.” Sam stood, stretched and headed out of the conference room. Dan followed. Neither of them said a word along the way. When they arrived, Sam grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the refrigerator, handed one to Dan, opened his and took a long drink. They sat down at one of the tables furthest from the door. Their silence continued as each man tried to break out of his own mental loops in order to determine where they were going wrong. Finally, Dan spoke.