A rock falls to Earth, in Australia.
It is discovered by an observation center outside of a town called Rumlye. ABD graduate assistants, hired help and a doctorate-in-tow field researcher are dispatched to find it. The rock is soon located, a rock in a dry sea of rocks. They don’t spot it themselves, but rather examine satellite photos and spot it by its crater and marea. Up close it positively glows compared to the red rocks around it, but they couldn’t even spot it from the road without use of a GPS.
The site is far off of that road. Two hours on paper, two-and-a-half driving against the wind. Measurements are found, samples are taken, photographs, and many other necessities of documentation. High fives occur, pats on the back, smiles abound.
It is loaded onto the flatbed through the use of a cunning counterweighted system. Everyone is hooked to a giant rope strung across a pulley system. The other end is then attached to the rock. All but one person slowly dangle off of the edge of the truck. The rock rises and swings, eventually coming to rest on the bed thanks to the last person and a large metal pole. More high fives are assigned.
The return trip is planned. This comes after field observations have revealed that a) the rock is not radioactive and b) it contains chondrules which occur in less than one percent of meteorites.
Desert to dusty road. Dusty road to tar-and-chip. Tar-and-chip to the Observation Center outside Rumlye. Gate, inner door, concrete slab with X-ray machine, spectroscope, and other tools.
High-fives all around. More tests begin.
* * * * *
A photo spread in a magazine – New Geologic Frontiers. Things go well.
A publicity/fundraising tour – universities down on the wet coast. Things go very well.
A news segment – Channel 14, out of Darwin. Not as good. The interviewer isn’t tossing softballs.
“Wait, that’s not a meteor. Some say it has been carved.”
“We have discovered nothing to suggest that. Ever. This meteor crashed to Earth, in the same way in which meteors have struck planets since time immemorial.”
“What about the possibility that it is something else? There have been potentially questionable items from space in the past. The SETI radio transmission, for instance—”
“This is a rock, made out of particles of many different kinds of minerals and metals. While its composition is found in a minority of meteors, this type of rock has been found before. What you are saying, if you pardon my frankness, has no bearing on our discovery.”
“But maybe—”
“It is a rock. An amazing, solar system-and-beyond-traveling rock. But nothing other than the all-powerful forces of the universe has shaped this rock.”
“Well, then, this is an exciting day for our viewers. We had discussed, prior to air, that we had a guest to join you, Dr. Weaving. Professor Amanda Lawrence of Victoria Academy. She is an art professor, and she insists that she can show detectable modifications on your rock. And she will be on the show after this message.”
* * * * *
And, in the way of all things, a recorded message is played to the viewers (but not to the studio audience) advertising a handheld machine which affixes beads to denim.
And then Professor Lawrence is there, on stage. Viewers are brought back. She is introduced with a video montage, clips of an interview, biographical material, snippets of book quotes, all on the big projection wall.
The proj wall then changes its pitch—first the summary of the meteor’s discovery, and then the summary of Professor Lawrence, and now a still shot of the meteor, from overhead, at the Observation Center. This is the familiar picture from New Geologic Frontiers. In the background Dr. Weaving looks pensive. Rumlye is a good place to be pensive.
Professor Lawrence speaks. “Consider, just for a moment, treating this rock as a piece of art. It is absurd, to be sure. But what of the chance? What it would mean—”
“No I’m sorry. This is a fascinating idea. But our Center, at the behest of our donors and the support of the State University of New York, in America, have given us this amazing opportunity to observe phenomena such as this rock and to document it. Observation, not speculation, is our mission.”
“Fair enough. Yet here,” and Professor Lawrence points with a green laser at the proj wall, “these chondrules at the corner of the top. These eight are nearly identical in size. Others around them fluctuate but these are the same. And they form a perfect octagon.”
“Yes, as our report stated, the existence of the octagonal shape is the result of basalt in the meteor. Upon crystallization the form is a pronounced octagon. For an example, look at the Giant’s Bridge in Ireland.”
“So the repetition, on the top—top being relative to the rock’s position in the photo—and on the sides and bottom is simple coincidence?”
“The basalt could remain following the loss of softer compounds from the outside, yes.”
“But a pattern is indeed left. Next, consider the overall shape. The transitions here and here…” And a new picture has come onto the proj wall, also from the magazine article shoot. “…and from side to side. The smooth tracks on this side. The effect is of an empty creekbed with oxbows. A darker swoosh of color showing banks on this side. And on the opposite side, in relief, are the jutting, ragged shapes which are the same but pushed outward instead of gouged inward. How does one side remain smooth and the other not, yet both are like a key and keyhole? Complements of each other.”
“It is certainly fascinating. Now you can see why this is my career.” A small chuckle rises from the audience. Weaving feels a jolt of fear, as he is not normally funny and his first impulse was that they were laughing at him. “It is a rock, created by the forces of the universe, chance, gravity, accretion, destruction.”
“But,” insists Professor Lawrence, “That is precisely why this is such a work of art. Only a sentient being could appreciate the perfection of this rock and understand that other sentient beings would understand.”
“As shown by examining the crater and marea, the rough side had initial impact with the desert rock. The jagged nature comes from this.”
“And coincidence results.”
“As coincidence is wont to do. Looking for meaning in the positioning of objects is pareidolia. Or augury.”
“Yet both sides end, no less, in perfect basaltic octagonal chondrule placement. A creator’s hand has this created. The tranquility felt in observing the two sides is palpable. You must have felt it. Mountain and valley. They are one. A rise and a fall, a didactic created. But above both. The octagon. The tranquility comes abruptly to a stop with the geometric shape, as if saying science holds over nature. Combined with the octagons on top and bottom, the two sides are surrounded.”
And on, to the end of the segment.
* * * * *
So maybe Professor Lawrence is correct. Where does that put us? If we are not alone, do we prepare for war? For peace? For nothing? Should we change what we do or continue as we are?
The course taken by the United Nations, in a resolution which passed today, is that the existence or absence of extraterrestrial life—or at least extraterrestrial rock shapers, it should say—should in no way be a factor in the funding or planning of any government outside its current space exploration plans. The governments are washing their hands of this.
Private sector, what are you going to do?
—Electric Cars and Life on Mars blog, posted 09/09/2031
* * * * *
WorldCraft headquarters. A different proj wall on a different continent, same photo shoot.
“So I want to send a message back.”
“To whom?”
“To the creating force, an intelligent force, in the universe, and we must respond to that Australian rock.”
“What is the response? I looked into this stuff, like we had talked about, and the way it currently works is that the groups send out radio signals in mathematical clusters: Fibonacci, squaring, et cetera.”
“No. That is the problem. Someone has sent us art, and the response must be art. It must be a perfect piece of art, as perfect as the chaos of the rock. Do you see it?”
The executive assistant, administrative assistant, intern, the Vice President of Marketing, and a reader of Electric Cars and Life on Mars look in silence for fifteen seconds of their lunch break. Then—
“I’ve been thinking about this all night. Let’s make a website and get people talking and buying t-shirts and coffee mugs with the rock on them. I want you to send a letter to Professor Lawrence. Write up a mission statement or something for the website. Tell her this: Here is what we need to do. We need to send a message back. We will need a rocket powerful enough to climb the gravity well. We will need a capsule powered through a combination of fuels and solar cells. We will need an artwork. And we will need a shitload of all three. We need to find someone who can trace back the path of the rock, and we will send things back toward the rock’s origin. Enough that there is at least a chance our message is received.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot then.”
“All night, like I said. I’ve been very bored lately.”
“I like the idea about selling swag.”
The site is made. But the idea is not feasible, and no response is forthcoming from Professor Lawrence. The buzz is dying. Spacecraft are expensive. You can’t build hundreds of something of which the funds of the world have thus far only managed to generate a handful.
* * * * *
So send one message back. Lucky or unlucky, a shot in the dark is at least a shot. We need donations. And art.
Donation sites—real and scam—are appearing. Money and art in a 1-to-1,000 ratio accrue. So a creator sent an artwork—a rock—hurtling through space as a message. Is it a greeting? A challenge? A warning? Have we received the start of a 10 million AU pen-pal relationship?
Our friends at WorldCraft distributed a press release saying the rock’s path has been charted. Out out out toward Cygnus. A bottle dropped in the Pacific at Honshu and picked up by the exact person it is addressed to in the Danube river outside Budapest, this is more likely.
Except, additionally, we don’t even hand an addressee, so it is more like dropping a bottle in the Pacific at Honshu and a person in Budapest finding it and a) realizing it is a message and not litter and b) it is addressed to them.
Thankfully our dear friend, our WorldCraft pioneer, creator of AfterLife, a social networking site which is networked by religious affiliation and which has over 100 million users—and that’s just counting the atheists—has been at the forefront of the private sector movement to at least address the possibility of this rock. Others are making a quick buck (or a small fortune, more likely), but at least he is interested in the application of the idea.
—Electric Cars and Life on Mars blog, posted 1/14/2032
* * * * *
“I have the answers to all of the questions. Ready?”
It’s a podcast, but a dramatic pause is always useful. The podcast plays automatically upon loading AfterLife‘s home page. It is also sent to media outlets all over the place.
“We send a rocket up the well. I propose WorldCraft‘s own Meatball 14. Once we’re orbiting Earth, we launch one thousand messages from Meatball: bite-sized rockets headed in different directions in the general area of origin. And we repeat until we run out of public interest… and money. I need donors. I need you. My money will only go so far here.”
He continues on, a lifetime as a tech industry snake oil salesman making the please for money seem reasonable, irresistible even, to some. Afterward, comments appear, especially on AfterLife. The most common response is, “Fine and good, but what would be a message? What does one say back to a rock polisher?” The next day he releases another podcast.
“I propose we send the most irrefutable statements possible. We must leave no doubt as to the possibility of creation. At the least we must show that we understood a message was sent, we received it, and we’ve responded back. We must send humans. Yes, humans.”
More pages of comments, editorials, rants, and on. Volunteers come close to equaling the critics of the idea.
* * * * *
It is currently impossible to send a human to Mars, which is 1 AU from Earth. Cygnus is thousands of times that distance. And even travel within Cygnus is thousands of time that distance. And 1,000 people? The travel time alone would be hundreds of years!
We appreciate a seedship story as much as the next person, but perhaps our dearly beloved Billionaire Reader is a tad overzealous and undereducated on the difficulties of space travel. No offense.
—Electric Cars and Life on Mars blog, posted 3/29/2032
* * * * *
And another AfterLife podcast. The host is a little more disheveled, a little more manic than the last episode a few months prior.
“Corpses. Of humans. We do not need to send living people. People equal life support. And food. And waste. Corpses equal no life support. No food. No safety requirements. One thousand little metal pods and a giant rocket. Each pod launches from the big rocket outward. One thousand pieces of shot from our multi-billion-dollar shotgun. Our pen-pal finds a metal tube with octagons or whatever symbols on the outside, but within is pretty irrefutable proof of intelligent life—knowledge of metalworking, combustion, physics, and art. All wrapped around biological remains, respectfully. Boom.”
Many people express horror at this idea. Many people leave AfterLife. But many others amend their wills, bequeathing their bodies to the cause.
The critics don’t really have a leg to stand on. To talk about the futility (or stupidity) of the project only drives attention to the project. Funding comes in, volunteers sign up (t-shirts sell in even more quantities), and no one can really stop it. Laws do prevent what could be considered as corpse mutilation (or the local legal variant) but owning an island, in international waters, makes this moot. And bodies begin to accumulate. People carrying through with promises. Gas is burnt on the island to run coolers to keep the bodies from decomposing. An idea is hatched after the first fuel bill is seen: let’s mummify them.
This is approved. Stipends are offered to increase volunteer numbers to the magical one thousand (twelve-hundred, really… allowing for testing, accidents, advanced decay, or general misplacement of corpses. That island is a long way from anywhere.). Donate your body, your family receives ten thousand dollars. Questionable deaths occur, as will happen when money is on the line.
But soon one thousand bodies officially (twelve-hundred literally) are packed in the sand of Salami Island (Billionaire Reader’s food fixation has been noticed, and commented upon, in various media for a decade). Bite-Sized Rockets (BSRs, or “bussers”) are built, and the big rocket is modified. Symbols are stamped upon the tubes. It was decided that each volunteer can submit a design for their tube: quotes from religious books, butterflies, graffiti, the word for mother in nine languages, even octagons. So with a degree of stress, these customizations are applied.
* * * * *
Today, the launch of Meatball 14 was successful.
A diaspora of corpses. Could we find a new beginning in death? Has AfterLife led to a new after-life? Are people sending their mummified loved ones toward nothing, or toward a greater future for the human race? A new network has sprouted on AfterLife, dedicated solely to relatives of volunteers for the program. The network is called Pen-Pals. We approve. And now we wait.
—Electric Cars and Life on Mars, posted 11/11/2032
* * * * *
Three hundred years later and 200 AU away a black, spheroid space ship collects one of the tubes and something examines it. Figures with spheroid bodies and a dozen-odd limbs clasp hands and look down upon the space trash.
(approximately):
“Put this with the others. It is just another dead organic mass.”
“Why do we find these things? Do you think they could be a response to the messages we sent?”
“No. Beings intelligent enough to understand our message would never send something like this. We have found burned organic masses, masses torn as if by sharp rocks, masses with skeletons broken. And desiccated, all! What intelligent race would consider desecration a fitting response?”
“So you think they bury their dead this way? And we have found only the few masses which did not burn upon reaching escape velocity?”
“I do not know. It may be worth looking into. Or maybe it is a waste of time.”
“Where did they come from?”
“That’s the problem. Too few have been found to plot a reverse trajectory.”
The ship continues on its path toward Barnard’s Star (although those shipboard simply call it Home). The ship encounters another, very different, ship, this one a bright yellow cloud of gas. The ice is broken as the two races each reveal tubes stamped with earth gibberish, and, despite differences in physiology, a good laugh is had by all.
And that meeting was, to the agreement of all parties—excepting the human corpses encased in metal—quite an historic moment.
Matthew A. Roberson, 10/1/2009