“At its current trajectory the alien ship will be within real-time-communication distance in less than a day,” Atlas said after he received the message from the alien spacecraft.
Atlas leaned against the window of an orbiting platform looking out into deep space. A large see-through glass window stretched the entire circumference of the space station, giving everyone an unobstructed view of the Dottiens solar system. They were located so far out from the center of the system that the local sun looked more like a bright star. Atlas looked at his hand and saw how little it was illuminated by the star’s light.
Atlas stepped back from the window and noticed everyone else in the room was already digesting the messaged they’d just received.
Angelique, Unity, and the three ships’ AIs all began mentally absorbing it through their connected matrices—they were plugged in, of course.
Unity closed her eyes while reviewing the data multiple times, deconstructing it for any inconsistencies or hidden clues or another layer of meaning.
Atlas walked next to Peter, who was standing over Hezekiah’s shoulder as he bought up the text message from the alien.
Everyone assumed the aliens were moving toward them to speak without needing to wait in between responses.
Atlas stepped away from the computer. “It’s a rather rude message.”
“I’d call it demanding,” Peter said.
The team had just received a message from an alien species. The same species who had infected humans on Earth with the virus that had brainwashed the population.
That same virus slowly infected the humans on the worlds Atlas and Angelique had colonized. They dragged that same virus across the stars to their new worlds, too. It caused a lot of hurt and destruction as it subtly guided their societies away from exploring the betaverse—the real world.
Angelique was the first to identify something was wrong. But her method of extraction was much cruder. More akin to cutting out the virus. Not quite knowing what was happening but understanding it was something in the technology. So, her method involved her destroying all electronics on one of her worlds and starting from absolute scratch. It was not pretty, but it had worked.
Atlas had found a way to destroy the virus that wiped it from the worlds they controlled. And this was obviously what had caused the alien to confront the team now.
Right when the team had successfully cleared all traces of the virus, an alien had arrived in system and blew up the Starnet—the FTL communication network the team had developed.
The alien had then demanded to negotiate or risk everyone being destroyed. Then to add insult to injury, the alien was now demanding the team leave the safety of their space station and travel into the aliens’ vessel. It wanted the teams to travel physically, too. They wanted them to take the devices containing their brain matrices into an eleph-ANT and negotiate in person.
Unity walked over toward the two old men, Atlas and Peter, who were still staring at the screen. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
Peter shook his head. “We always have a choice.”
Atlas scratched the back of his neck. “They want our matrices for a reason. I’m not sure we should give them to them.”
“Could it be a trap?” Angelique asked.
“It’s a negotiation tactic,” Peter said. “They know if we are here on our own space station then we will negotiate as equals. If we are on their ship, then it’s clear they are the powerful ones. I don’t think we should let them have the upper hand.”
Hezekiah swiveled around on his chair to face the group. “We don’t know what they’re capable of. If we say no, they might just come over here and take our matrices.”
“They can try,” Peter said almost instinctually but not sounding convincing.
Atlas knew Peter was acting braver than he really was. Personally, Atlas wasn’t so sure. In his mind there were risks with either option. The alien made it clear it was nonnegotiable—they had to meet in person. So, denying the request would immediately cause the negotiations to end and force the alien to respond. But respond in what way? he thought. He started looking around the room for a piece of paper.
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His ship noticed the erratic glancing around and handed him a notebook and a pen.
They were running out of time to decide; the invisible countdown timer of when the alien would dock in system was heavy in everyone’s mind. Atlas drew a line down the middle of the notebook and began writing a pro and con list. “We have two options.” He wrote on one side of the line, Demand to stay, and on the other side he wrote, Go to the alien ship. “If we decide to go, they’ll have control of our matrices. Meaning they can take us back to Earth even if we disagree. So, I don’t think we should do it.”
“Agreed,” Peter added. “We should make them work for it. Going straight to them should be a last resort.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best move,” Angelique said. “We don’t know what they’re capable of doing. We don’t know their culture, either. It might take negotiation off the table.”
Atlas offered up an answer. “Maybe we don’t say no. Maybe we just say we can’t.”
As if preempting their response, the alien supposed-god race sent them a message with instructions on how to load their matrices into an eleph-ANT.
“There goes that plan.” Unity finished reviewing the instructions. “They seem determined to get us onto their ship.”
“Do we vote?” Unity suggested.
Peter shook his head. “I don’t think we’re done understanding our options yet.” He pointed at the piece of paper. “I get the feeling they want us on that ship. So the next question is do they have the capability to get us there if we say no?”
Atlas looked around the room and saw shrugs from everyone.
“Okay, so we don’t know whether they have the capabilities to force us. Let’s assume they don’t. Can we still engage in a negotiation in good faith without being on their ship?”
Again, as if answering the question posed by Atlas, they received an addendum to the question he just asked. It clarified by saying negotiations would only take place on their ship and there would be consequences if they didn’t. There was no mention of what those consequences were.
Atlas felt the mood of the team change slightly, the timely response from the alien acting as a reminder of just how close to them it was.
Atlas wondered if they had a bug listening to their conversations because this was the second time they’d received a message as soon as one of them had asked the question. But that wasn’t possible because any messages would have needed to be sent before Atlas had even posed the question because of light speed delays. But then again, these aliens had spent many, many years manipulating, and obviously understanding, human behavior. Maybe this was just educated guessing. They probably had a really well-developed algorithm of how humans would respond. Atlas’s mind went back and forth on the idea the alien had been in hiding on his ship. So, they probably had a model of how everyone in the room right now would respond to this situation.
“That was creepy; they knew exactly what we were discussing,” Atlas said after he reread the message on Hezekiah’s screen for the second time. “Okay so what are the risks of going over?”
“Utter destruction,” Peter offered.
Hezekiah spoke a little cautiously. “It sounds like we might get that if we say no, too.”
Atlas bit his lower lip. “Let’s be serious for a second. Is it truly unwise for us to board their ship? Are we absolutely sure we’ll be destroyed if we go there?”
Atlas looked around the room and saw blank faces staring back at him.
Hezekiah stepped away from the computer; he looked a bit stressed. “If we go, at least we’re not aggravating them.”
“I agree,” Unity added. “I’d rather not anger them.”
Atlas didn’t know Unity or Hezekiah very well. But got the feeling they leaned more toward the risk-averse side of the spectrum.
There was a long patch of silence before Angelique spoke. “It sounds like we’re doomed if we do, doomed if we don’t. So what do we do? I don’t want to go, but I also don’t want to find out what they do if we say no.”
“Run?” Peter suggested.
“If we were going to run,” Atlas said, “we should have done that before they got this close. It’s too late.” Even as he said those words, Atlas felt the closing in of a metaphorical wall around him. He felt the number of options available to him shrink just a little.
“There’s a third option,” Ariana said, speaking for the first time. “We can do both.”
Everyone looked at her at once.
Atlas felt a slight pressure that he didn’t know was there lift a little at the mention of another option.
Ariana still had her eyes closed as she spoke. “Angelique has a matrix-production unit on her ship. We duplicate ourselves and send one version of ourselves there and leave one here.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Angelique said. “If we use my Ange’s Angel protocol we can ensure the two versions of us want to come back together.”
“What if the aliens capture a version of us?” Hezekiah asked, seemingly switching sides in the debate.
Without a beat Ariana replied with a level of coldheartedness that sounded out of place with what she was suggesting. “Self-destruct.”
Angelique’s mouth fell open. “Suicide!”
“I don’t want to kill myself. I’d rather get carted off to some lab somewhere to be studied,” Hezekiah said, again arguing against the side he was supporting moments before.
Peter raised his hands inserting some much-needed order to the chaos, which was this conversation up until this point. “Let’s vote. I suspect everyone only wants to go if we duplicate ourselves so we don’t face the risk of absolute death?”
Nods came all around the room, so Peter continued. “We have two options. One, we stay here and attempt to negotiate. Or two, we split into two and send one version of each of us to the alien ship.”
Before Peter opened the voting, Atlas spoke. “Assuming this is a trap and the aliens plan on dragging us back to Sol anyway, or worse they want to destroy us, then splitting into two is our best chance at survival because the version of us still here can do something about it.”
Atlas nodded at Peter to confirm he was finished speaking.
“Okay,” Peter said. “Now we vote.”