Transmission

Coordinates will be sent along this path, the voice said, but the vessel’s seal will be tight to preserve us. You must find it. You must prepare to receive us…

Kevin gasped with the effort of translating, the world around him coming into focus again as he stopped. He could see the President staring at him now, then looking over to Professor Brewster.

“What does all this mean?” he asked. “What are you telling me?”

Kevin could answer that one.

“I think…” Kevin said. “I think the aliens are coming here.”

The President stared at him. So did the others. Then the chaos started, with a dozen people trying to talk at once. The President spoke over them.

“That’s enough,” he said, gesturing for them to quiet down. “I know all of your concerns. Professor Brewster, there are those on my team who feel that Kevin here isn’t safe in your facility; that he is vulnerable to being snatched or attacked by our enemies. They want to move him to a secure site.”

“You mean you want to hide me away in some kind of bunker,” Kevin said. He shook his head. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Sometimes it isn’t about what we want, son,” the President said. “It’s about what’s good for the country.”

“With respect, Mr. President,” Professor Brewster said. “Kevin’s wishes on the matter should count for something. He has not committed a crime, so it would be wrong, even illegal, to lock him up. This is a secure facility, and if the others here want to contribute to that security, that would be very helpful. But they should do that here, where there is the technological knowhow to study what is happening.”

Kevin was surprised to find Professor Brewster standing up for him like that, even if he knew that it was partly because he didn’t want to risk losing the chance to be a part of all this. It seemed that the President was a little surprised to hear it too.

“That’s a very… forceful point, Professor,” he said. “Very well, the boy will stay here. We will provide your facility with whatever it needs, but you will coordinate with my office. I need you to understand the seriousness of this.”

 “Yes sir,” Professor Brewster said. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Kevin wasn’t entirely sure what the professor had just agreed to. It sounded as though he’d just given away a lot of the control of the project.

“I need you to understand the seriousness of this too, Kevin,” the President said. “I thought before I came here that this was nonsense, and now I’m not so sure.”

“It’s true,” Kevin insisted.

“The truth is that it doesn’t matter,” the President said. “Not now. We have reports of Russia and China mobilizing their militaries, conducting ‘exercises’ in case of some kind of attack. There have been riots in the Philippines, because people think this means the end of the world. We need to be very careful about all this, Kevin. I’m going to allow things to continue for now, but there will be people here to watch what’s happening.”

That didn’t matter to Kevin. What mattered was that they kept going. The aliens were sending something to Earth, and whatever it was, Kevin was determined to find it.

CHAPTER TEN

Kevin sat in his room, listening to nothing. There were signals, recorded by the scientists through their long-range equipment, but none of those signals turned into words within his mind. None of them seemed to have meaning.

Kevin was starting to get worried about that, and it seemed that he wasn’t the only one.

“Why aren’t you hearing anything, Kevin?” Professor Brewster asked. He and Dr. Levin stood there watching, waiting for whatever would come next.

Kevin didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing to listen to.”

“You must try, Kevin,” Professor Brewster said, with a disapproving look, as if the solution to it lay in simply doing more, or pushing past the difficulty of contact.

“David,” Dr. Levin said. “Don’t pressure Kevin. Can’t you see that he’s getting sicker?”

Kevin knew that part was true. He’d started to notice a small tremor now in his left hand that would stop if he concentrated, but quickly started again whenever he was stressed. That meant most of the time now in the research institute.

“Then we need to get him more medical attention,” Professor Brewster declared. “Kevin, you have to understand, I have government departments I’ve barely even heard of calling me up to know what’s happening. I had a four-star general call me earlier, wanting to know if there were any potential military applications for this information. With the President wanting to know what’s happening, this isn’t a good time for us not to be able to say anything.”

“I can’t translate things if they aren’t there,” Kevin said. What did they want him to do? Make things up? Maybe they still thought he was doing that, despite everything. Kevin hated that thought.