Transmission

He thrust the pad at Kevin, holding it out like an accusation. A buzzing, clicking signal came from it, which sounded as though it might just be static, or a mechanical problem, or crickets stuck somewhere in the workings of the machine.

To Kevin, though, the words were clear.

We are coming. Be prepared to accept us.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“We?” Dr. Levin asked. She sounded as though she could barely contain her excitement. “Who is we? Are we talking about some kind of alien civilization?”

“Hold on a second,” Professor Brewster snapped, sounding skeptical. “Maybe Kevin’s is the wrong translation. Maybe there is nothing to even translate—maybe it’s just a bunch of noise. Maybe it’s just a figment of the boy’s imagination.”

“Then how did he know the coordinates?” Dr. Levin asked. “We know that someone sent this signal. Just think of the possibilities…”

She trailed off, as if she couldn’t quite comprehend all the possibilities.

“Maybe no one sent it,” another scientist piped up. “Space is filled with signals that have no sender, or receiver.”

“Still,” Dr. Levin insisted, “you can’t discount the possibility that this truly is a signal sent by another society. And that Kevin did indeed interpret it directly. What if he did? Are you prepared to shut down that possibility? Are you prepared to just walk away from it? To accept the consequences?”

Brewster fell into a grudging silence.

“We need more information,” he finally said. “We need to study Kevin further.”

“Study him further?” his mother said. “This is my son.”

“True,” Dr. Levin countered. “And yet your son may also just be our planet’s sole link to alien life.”

*

Kevin sat in the room they had given him and looked around, wondering what it was for. It looked as though it might have been designed for the observation of people over long periods. Either that, or giant goldfish.

It was comfortable, but it was impossible to forget that it was in the middle of the laboratory. The bed was in the middle of the room, and everything seemed to be a pristine, clinical white. Kevin suspected there might be cameras looking down. There was certainly a length of glass along one wall that was obviously one way. It made him feel a little like a frog waiting to be dissected in someone’s biology class.

“Do you have everything you need?” his mother asked. “Have they even fed you yet?”

Trust his mother to find a way to be embarrassing even in a situation like this.

“Yes, Mom, they’re feeding me,” Kevin said.

“I just worry about you,” she said.

“You have to work,” Kevin said. He understood. His mother couldn’t afford to take more time off. Not even for this. There were too many bills to pay, and Kevin being sick had only added medical bills to the list. He didn’t like hearing the guilt in his mother’s voice, as if she was doing something wrong by taking him to the place where they hunted for aliens.

“This is the best place for you, though,” his mother said. She sounded as though she was trying to convince herself.

“It’s a cool place to be,” Kevin assured her. “They have so many things going on.”

It was amazing being a part of something this important.

“Hi, Kevin,” Phil said, poking his head around the door. He seemed to brighten even more at the sight of Kevin’s mother. “Hi, Ms. McKenzie.”

“Call me Rebecca,” his mother said. There was something strange in that, maybe because it wasn’t something she said very often.

“I thought I would give Kevin the grand tour,” Phil said. “Maybe you’d like to join us?”

“That sounds good,” his mother said, and again, Kevin had a sense of a side to it that was… no, he shouldn’t think like that. That was just gross. Parents weren’t supposed to go around liking people. That was practically… well, it made the idea of alien worlds look normal.

“If you’d both like to come with me,” Phil said, leading the way down the halls. “I mean, officially, I guess we’re not supposed to just wander around, because some of the projects are kind of sensitive, but I sometimes think we kind of overdo that, you know?”

He led the way to a space where scientists appeared to be firing a laser at a blank surface again and again, making minute adjustments between each attempt.

“They’re looking into ways lasers might be used in mining asteroids,” Phil explained. There was something about the look he gave Kevin’s mom that said he was trying to impress her. Kevin found that kind of funny. His mom was his mom. She wasn’t going to be impressed by lasers. Even if they were kind of cool.

After that, he showed them a space where drones flew around in a large room like insects, moving fast but somehow never colliding with one another.

“We’re doing work on using AI to make it so that drones can interact without crashing,” Phil said.

Kevin saw his mother smile at that. “So that there’s less chance of losing the next package I order?”

Phil nodded. “Well, that or they could be used in building work, or for work in extreme environments.”