Waking Gods (Themis Files #2)(8)

—Yes, we knew we could trigger the discharge. That’s how we destroyed the lab in Denver. We just had to figure out what buttons Vincent fell on. The rest we found by accident. Turns out if you release the burst with the sword on, it comes out of it. The bigger the sword, the more focused the beam is. In New York, we train on the shores near New Rochelle and shoot at the water. The blast makes a hole about the size of a city block, then it fills up again. It’s pretty cool to watch. We also tried on something solid, made a fairly large rock disappear. I can’t tell you if our weapon would work against that robot, but it’ll wipe anything of this world off it.

You know Dr. Franklin thinks going to London is a bad idea.

—I do.

—Well … What she said made more sense to me than anything else I’ve heard. We assume we were supposed to find Themis, but say it wasn’t the case. Say they came here to get it back, destroy it, whatever. More to the point, there’s nothing you can put in front of that robot that would pose any serious threat to it, except maybe us. Do we really want to make first contact with an alien species by sending the only thing we have—which isn’t even ours—that it could see as a menace? I’m just asking. I’m a soldier, so if they tell me to walk up behind it and kick it in the butt, I will. But if we can avoid the whole me and Vincent dying thing, you know … that’d be good.

—I sympathize. What you must understand is that the powers that be will not let that alien robot sit in the middle of the most populous city in the UK much longer without doing anything. At some point, human nature will take over and they will send something. If that something is not Themis—who, by the way, is also the only thing that might seem familiar to this new robot—it will be His Majesty’s Armed Forces. If I have to choose between the two, I would rather send you.

—Isn’t there anything we can send that doesn’t have weapons attached to it? Something cute, and fuzzy. Send Barney, or a bunch of kittens. Did you see Close Encounters of the Third Kind? We can play keyboards to it, do a light show, teach these guys some sign language.

—The British Government is ahead of you on this one though your ideas are remarkably similar. They have initiated what they call first-contact protocol.

—Do I wanna know?

—They have installed screens around the park and are showing pictures of monuments, animal species, cities, some clips from old movies. They are playing music from the fifties and sixties on a speaker system.

—Why the old stuff? What’s wrong with new music?

—I believe the rationale behind it is that any signals that made it far enough for an alien species to pick up would have left Earth a long time ago.

—So they won’t be disappointed if they came here for Elvis?

—Creating familiarity is indeed the intent. It does feel a little improvised, but you have to understand that scientists believed that finding alien life would mean microbes, or an overly regular radio signal, nothing like what we are faced with today. I realize how futile this all may seem, but at the very least, it does not hinder our efforts and it makes it appear as if the government is doing something.

—So what’s the best-case scenario here? They like the British light show, they exit the robot, and they stay for dinner?

—I believe that, secretly or not, everyone is hoping they will simply leave. If they do not, then we hope that they will be the ones to initiate a dialogue and dictate the terms of our mutual discovery. Given their obvious technological superiority, it would seem like the most logical and safest course of action.

—Why would they travel all this way only to leave after a couple days?

—Interestingly enough, it is probably what we would do. At least, it is what we would have done half a century ago. It might be an urban legend, but I was told that in the fifties, the US military started thinking about what it would do if we encountered sentient alien life. They came up with a seven-step procedure, starting with remote surveillance. We would then secretly visit the alien world, and if we felt our weaponry and technology to be more advanced than the aliens, we would begin a series of brief landings during which we would gather samples of plant and animal life, perhaps abducting an alien or two in the process. After that, we would make our existence known to as many aliens as possible, and if we were satisfied with their reaction, we would make contact.

—And if we felt the aliens were superior? What was the plan?

—Pray that they do not see us as food.





FILE NO. 1422

PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY—DR. ROSE FRANKLIN, HEAD OF SCIENCE DIVISION, EARTH DEFENSE CORPS

This is what I was afraid of. This is why I wish we … I … had never found Themis. They’re here. Her family’s here, now. Maybe they came to take her home. I wish they would. I wish they’d take me with them. Leave the world as it should be. Even if I stay behind, I do hope they simply leave because whatever they choose to do, there isn’t anything we can do to stop them.

That robot—we named him Kronos—could be six thousand years more advanced than Themis. Assuming that our societies followed a similar evolutionary path, their technological capabilities would have increased exponentially as well. We invented more things in the last one hundred years than we did in the previous one thousand, and we’re likely to invent more than that in the next ten years. Technology might plateau at some point and evolve more slowly, but I can’t even begin to imagine what six thousand years of technological progress might mean for people this advanced. I mean that literally: I can’t imagine it. To say that Themis might be antiquated is such an understatement. She might be the equivalent of a wooden toy for the robot in London. I’d like to keep her as far from there as I can for as long as I can. Unfortunately, that may not be very long. I suggested evacuating the area and waiting six months before we attempt anything. If these aliens want to make contact, let them do it. More importantly, don’t force them to if that’s not what they’re here for. Eugene—he would kill me if he heard me call him by his first name—made it very clear to me that the British Government doesn’t have that kind of patience. I like Eugene. He’s a self-righteous sixty-year-old general with all the open-mindedness you’d expect from a self-righteous sixty-year-old general. But Eugene hates war. He’s seen enough death for a dozen lifetimes, and I trust him to do the right thing.