Factoring Humanity

When it was done, Heather and Paul sat back and stared at it. Was it art? An altar? Or something else? It was certainly provocative that it made up a kind of crucifix shape — even now, with it lying on its side, the image was unavoidable — but how could aliens share that particular bit of symbolism? Even if one granted that a putative God might have had putative mortal children on other worlds, surely no one else would have come up with the cross as an execution device — it was geared toward human anatomy, after all. No, no, the resemblance had to be coincidental.

The whole thing seemed ramshackle. In fact, more than anything, it reminded Heather of something that had happened in kindergarten. Her class had gone in 1979 to see the first-ever landing of a Concorde jet at what was then called Toronto International Airport. After they’d returned, a kindly janitor had made a pretend Concorde for the kids to play in from an old garbage can and some green corrugated cardboard. This thing was about as flimsy as that had been.

Paul shook his head in wonder. “What do you suppose it is?”

Heather shrugged. “I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

She looked at her watch, and Paul looked at his.

They walked up to the subway station together. Heather had to go east to Yonge; Paul, who lived in a condo at Harbourfront, needed to go south to Union. He came down to the eastbound platform, just to make sure Heather got safely on a train. St. George station was decorated in pale green tiles, not unlike bigger versions of those they’d assembled that evening. The tunnels were quite straight here; Heather could see her train coming up well in advance of its arrival.

“Thanks, Paul,” she said, smiling warmly. “I really appreciate your help.”

Paul touched her arm lightly; that was all. Heather wondered what she would have done if he’d tried to kiss her.

And then her train rumbled into the station, and she headed back home to her empty house.

Heather had tossed and turned all night, dreaming alternately about the bizarre alien artifact and about Paul.

Most of the subway trip to work was underground, but at two stretches along the Yonge arm the subway waxed oxymoronic and poked out into the light of day. At both points — around Davisville and Rosedale stations — the sunlight seemed painfully bright to Heather’s sleep-deprived eyes.

Mercifully, when she finally arrived at her office, the drapes were still closed. She couldn’t work comfortably with the construct made of eight cubes dominating the room. But she sat quietly in the darkness, sipping a coffee she’d bought on the way in from the Second Cup in the lobby, waiting for her head to stop pounding.

Which, finally, it did. She’d hoped a night’s sleep would have suggested some sort of answer to the puzzle represented by what they had built, but nothing had come to her. And now, looking at the thing, she felt like a fool — what a crazy idea it had been! She was glad that Omar — and just about everyone else — was away on vacation.

Heather took another sip of coffee and decided she was ready to face the day. She got up, went to the window and pulled the faded drapes. Sunlight streamed in.

She sat back down, cradling her head with her hands, and -

What the hell?

The painted-on markings on the substrate panels were sparkling in the sunlight. They were a film of crystals, so perhaps that wasn’t too surprising, but -

— they seemed to dance, to shimmer.

She got up to look at them more closely, stepping across the room, and -

— and she tripped over a pile of paperite printouts she’d left on the floor. She went tumbling forward, crashing into the structure she’d built.

She should have ended up smashing it to bits — not just the big square panels, but also snapping many of the connections between the thousands of tiles.

She should have done that — but she didn’t.

The structure held. In fact, Heather came close to breaking her arm when she smashed into it.

Something was holding the panels together. Up close, she could see that the individual square markings on the tiles were flashing separately, refracting like the surface of soap bubbles.

Yesterday this had been a flimsy construct — jerrybuilt, held together by clamps, propped up by a stack of books.

But today -

She went to the far end of the structure, examining it. Then she gave it a good hard rap with her knuckles It was solid, but not completely immobile; the unit shifted slightly. Her fall had pressed one face flush against the wall. Heather used her foot to nudge out the stack of books holding up that end; the volumes cascaded to the floor.

But the final cube still stood solid. Instead of collapsing under its own weight, the row of cubes stuck straight out into space.

Maybe the paint acted as a kind of cement after it had time enough to dry? Maybe -

She looked around the room, saw the light streaming through the window, saw her own shadow on the far wall.

Could it be solar powered?