J3E Press

Stas pointed at the graph with a blunt index finger and unpainted, albeit manicured, nail. The ruggedized laptop screen gave off rainbow circles around her fingertip and some of the thick desert fines, the ‘moon-dust’ as the Team all called it, made a cloud in the air, sparkling in the beams of light that peeked past taped-over windows.

“See? Here? This sequence? So it looks almost but not quite random, just enough pattern for you to know something is there, not enough to do anything, right? That’s how we know encrypted signal traffic… It is something patterned enough to get you interested, random enough to know you can’t figure it manually. Means the big brains and the bots work it, at the national level.” The young Technical Sergeant spoke with intensity. She wasn’t angry, nor talking down to the burly ODA comms guy. But after three go-rounds breaking it down to increasingly ‘Barney-like’ levels, she wasn’t pulling any punches, either. Roberts, a thirteen-year veteran of Special Forces and a workmanlike hacker in his own right, wasn’t used to hearing that tone from anyone. He was used to being the smartest guy in the room, at least when it came to beeps and blips. After four and a half months in close quarters, he knew that Stas wasn’t meaning to condescend, but he couldn’t help wondering how he got here, listening to some snot-nosed Air Force kid barely two tours under her belt explain SIGINT to him.

“I got that, got that the second time you showed me. And I got that it repeats, on the second tab, in the other cut. So what’s the issue? That is a classic decryption crib, what’s the big deal?”

“Repeats on that cut, and then again over here and over here, but here it’s interspersed. And when I run it through a sequencer cutting out every 2.798 seconds in a Fibonacci sequence, 2.798 here, 2.798 then 5.596 then 8.394 then 13.99 seconds… Extracts the same pattern. Three more times like that, another couple at 1.76 seconds. That I’ve found so far, I’m sure there is more out there, now that I know where to look. And that ain’t a crib or sloppy OPSEC, that is something else. That is nonsense, is what it is. Nulls, y’know?” Roberts did, in fact, know, but he was trying desperately not to. And he was thanking all the cold and hostile stars in the crowded sky that there was less than a week left for Stas at the Team House. He could about hold her off for that long, but after…

“Okay, so there’s what I don’t get. So you’re saying the encryption is putting some fluff in the signal to disguise it, to braid noise in with the signal to make it harder to pick out?” This bait wouldn’t work. It had kept her occupied for a month, but she had come knocking on the gym door last night at almost 0430, obviously having missed a meal or two ruling it out. She wasn’t buying it again. But he had to try.

“That’s what we thought. And I been trying it, in every combination and structure I could imagine, for weeks now. National laughed it off, said I was seeing things, trust the analytics, so for the last week it’s been just me. And now I’m satisfied… This isn’t signal. This is a random number sequence. Every digital random number generator, at bottom, is deterministic, because the computers doing it are deterministic. This ‘signal’ was generated artificially as noise, random numbers and sequence, then that random noise was encrypted, but lazily, because at bottom it was just noise, right? But it ain’t real. We’ve been chasing a ghost. I’ve been chasing a ghost. There’s no there, there. Just spoofing. I don’t know how they’re doing the technical side of it, how they’re getting selectors everywhere, but that’s not important. However they got them to talk, they’re just talking gibberish, just trash. It isn’t real. And what THAT means, I don’t know. And no fucking chance I’ll get it figured out in two days. I can keep working on it once I get back, but you’re going to have to drop it to me, I can’t…” As Roberts opened his mouth to answer, Japes put his hand on his arm, shook his head. He sat down at the table with the two of them, reaching up and softly closing the laptop screen. Stas was still staring, lost in thought. Japes set a half-full package of black licorice twists in front of her, tapping it twice.

“Haven’t been getting any sleep lately, have you? How many days since you last got at least four hours, had three hot meals in a row?”

“I… I can’t sleep. Haven’t been able to. The nightmares… The kid. The Madonna one, the little Grey. Every time I close my eyes, she comes back. Sing to her, rock and soothe her. Sometimes it works, a little. God knows how. She touches my face, rubs my eyebrow. Wake up, and it’s like I haven’t slept at all. Worse.” Stas sat down heavily herself in the folding chair, squirmed on the tape-encrusted cushion until it approached without reaching comfort. “Keep up the Rip-Its and factoring, sometimes I don’t even know I’m sleeping, just happens. When it does, when I sneak up on it, fall asleep working, sometimes I can go a couple of hours before the dreams come, nice thick fat and lazy dreamless sleep like a teddy bear with all the stuffing coming out. No aliens, no spaceships, just black. Then the dreams come, and I wake up. Screaming. Or crying, sometimes, if I’m honest.” Stas smiled wanly. Japes, with his cultivated bedside manner, just let her talk. It was a measure of trust that she’d be willing to mention crying or even screaming to them at all, it had taken months until she was comfortable enough to do that. Months that they all heard the crying anyways, but said nothing.

“Always spaceships, still? You starting to believe? Gonna go find yourself an IG to talk to, blow your own whistle?” Japes words were hard, but his tone softened them into private in-jokes, professional joshing among peers. That, too, was cultivated, a learned skill.

“Nah, I may be crazy, but I’m not whacked. I don’t believe it, I know better. Mefloquine Mondays and too much bad sci-fi as a kid. No, I’m not becoming a believer. Matter of fact, I even did the math, figured the whistle-blower out. I know what it is now.” Her thick braids, growing a little tall as the roots grew out, waggled in the dusty air of the comms room. The sat-com on the corner squawked intemperately, some message the others probably should have paid more attention to, had they been playing their roles right. But they were too busy trying to communicate alarm and reassurances over Stas’ head with eyebrow waggles and brow furrows alone. Roberts finally took the bullet.

“Figured it out? What do you mean?” There was tension in his neck and his index finger was fingering the hem of his basketball shorts obsessively.

“The math. Look, so a couple years ago they did a survey with Gallup on Americans that believe UFOs are real actual spacecraft from another planet. Pew did another one on how many thought the government knew more than they were telling, that UAPs reflect some kind of physical material item that might be a threat to national security. Both of them came out with the same figure, around eleven percent of Americans think UAPs are definitely real. Physical objects with some kind of material technical existence, something to be found. A little less, almost ten percent, think the USG knows something, in some secret squirrel program or another, right? So take that as your base rate. There are over 1.25 million Top Secret clearances out there, counting military, contractors, and civil service. So if eleven percent of one and a quarter million feel that way, that is around 137,500 TS-clearance holders that are true believers. Make it half that if you want to be charitable, say that somehow intel monkeys are less credulous than the average bear. We all know THAT ain’t true, but even given. That is still almost 69,000 true believers in SCIF-land. You with me?”

Roberts and Japes couldn’t look her in the eye now, and Japes was frantically making a ‘wave-off’ gesture to Roberts under the table. “Okay. With you.” Roberts said it slowly, tasting every word like he didn’t know if he should spit them out or just chug and hope they somehow slipped down his gullet before making him sick.

“So if only one in a thousand folks have the experience of being a total jackass to their boss, constantly carping on things and starting needless arguments and getting occasionally shut down because no one wants to hear it when there’s real work to do, if only one in a thousand is such a geek on the topic that people avoid them in the chow hall and don’t invite them for drinks with the rest of the team, that is still seventy, seventy-five people across the total force that feel like they are being persecuted and prevented from talking about it. From following up on some lead, some dead end that they’ve been chasing after hours and when the actual taskers languish. Seventy joes that are feeling persecuted for what they’re talking about, feel like their boss is trying to shut them up.”

Silence for a moment as they tried to feel out where she was going, how much she knew. Then she started again. “How many of those have some chunk of rock in a drawer, some piece of shrapnel, that they were told to shut up about after no one could do anything with it? And all those geeks and all the others who maybe just once got pulled off an assignment they wanted, suspecting it’s because of their UFO hobby-horse? They all collect their individual grievances and suspicions and baseless innuendo, even if nothing at all is out there, and bring it to the AARO program, to the UFO-guys. The whistle-blower, he never said he SAW anything himself, ever handled it or saw an actual cover-up himself. Just that multiple people have come forward and told him about being persecuted for their understanding, that THEY were blacklisted and sidelined because of the geekery that they were exhibiting. That they knew there was more going on but couldn’t talk about it or prove it, because someone above them or around them was preventing them from talking. Well shit.”

A deep sigh echoed through the room. The two Special Forces role-players were all but holding their breath. This seemed like a safe road, like she was veering away from the danger.

“Even if you just restrict the conversation to non-SIGINT types, there are plenty of annoying assholes with clearances, guys that will talk you to sleep about nothing you have ever or would ever give a shit about when you just want to do the job and go home. Folks that you would like to persecute if you could, bully if you could, just to get them to SHUT THE FUCK UP for once. Maybe seventy or so of them. And all those annoying alien fanboys collect around the AARO, come to these guys to tell them all the shit that everyone else is long since tired of hearing about. And that is enough for the whistle-blower to testify to in hearings, that does it. Proves what he says. Even with absolutely nothing going on. It’s just numbers.”

Roberts and Japes sagged in their chairs as she continued to speak, oblivious to what was going on, a true SIGINTer to the end. She played with the laptop screen, flipping it up and down, checking that the Ethernet connector was still in place. Japes nodded softly, the alarm having melted from his face.

“Those are some numbers. You really were thinking this one through, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s like that old Fermi/Groves canard, y’know? ‘A great general is one that wins five battles in a row, only two in a hundred generals are great.’ ‘50/50 chance for the first, 25% for number two, 12.5 for three, 6.25, 3.125 for five battles won randomly at even odds. We’re over par.’ Same thing, but with true believers in government positions. I don’t know, Mike, this whole thing has got me spooked. These dreams, I mean. Started getting them back at Arifjan, and then when I got sent out here, got whisked up from my desk-job and asked to go play in the Big Leagues… They got worse, if anything. I’ve been afraid it’s been affecting my work, giving me brain fog. I feel like it has, at any rate. Feel second best. Feel all fuzzy sometimes, almost like I’ve had a drink or two. But it ain’t tipsy, I’m just… Tired. Bone tired, y’know?” Stas startled both men by looking Japes straight in the eye as she finished, holding his gaze.

Japes reddened a little, looked away. Roberts cut in quickly. “Hell, chica, if this is you on a bad day, if this is you fuzzy-headed, I’d hate to meet you in a dark alley at your best. You’re one of the best I’ve ever seen at building out trees and overlays. Finding networks, identifying where to look and when. And that’s not even mentioning what you do with ELINT, girl. You’re amazing. No one I’ve ever met does tracks like you. That’s why you got called out here, ‘cause we needed you. Half-lit bulb or full. Shit, if you’re half, the rest of us are stuck on the floor still.” He held her gaze a little too long, swiped at a hand that was set back in her lap abruptly. Japes frowned, slightly. Narrowed his gaze.

“Look, Stas, call it a night. Grab a snack, watch something on the shared drive, something mindless you haven’t seen a thousand times. Relax. Sleep. Tomorrow pack, finish the continuity book, and day after that the airfield. Sucks that you only get a high-five with your replacement, but it happens.” Stas nodded, closed her eyes. “And, Stas?” Her eyes opened back up, alert, flashing side to side. “Thank you. For all you’ve done here. With what you’ve got, the new guy will have us warheads on foreheads in no time. Time you get back to your email, you’ll be grousing about how he got all the credit and you did all the work.” Stas shut her eyes again briefly, nodded out for a second, shook herself and stood up, started towards the common room. As she left, she sneezed at all the dust.

“Funny about the site. Heard so much about the mountains out here, scrub trees and all. And flying runs out with you guys, from the camera, I could see it like that… But here at the Team House itself, place is just like Kuwait. A cat-box, nothing but sand. Found the onliest ugly spot in all of Syria, and that’s where you put the Team. Army aesthetics for you.” The others chuckled mirthlessly, with laughs that didn’t touch the worry in their eyes. Stas waved good night, and shut the door behind her.

Without looking back, Japes reached behind him to knock on the vault door. Before his knuckles even touched the mud-brown painted steel, he heard the click of the mag-lock. With his chin, he waved Roberts off and went inside, sat down heavily in front of the folding cubicle-carpet screen. The peppery smell of the vault grew, cloying and sickly as soon as the door closed. Without looking up, Japes spoke to the Presence.

“You broke the Pact. Deal was, we cover for your ant-hills at home and abroad, and you leave us the fuck alone, give us an in for jumping up our tech. She was green, fellow military. Off-limits.”

“The seed required. For completion. Before-times military.” The skittering sound of the Presence was dry and almost dusty, a good contrast to the chilly damp of the vault’s air. Japes shook his head wearily.

“What seed? Don’t bullshit me, Angus. She had a hysterectomy when was she in the eighth grade, some accident. Don’t give me that crap. She hasn’t had any ‘seed’ for ten years, more. Not for you or anybody. What the hell are you torturing her for? If she hadn’t reported the dreams to one of our guys in Behavioral Health, what would have happened? Why all this charade, this fake-ass house and half an ODA taken off the battlefield to play nursemaid for four months? God knows how much work faking the signals.”

“If when not reported, visit at place of prior sleep. More persons, less safety. But choice not made among Us-Space. You-Space directed subterfuge. Visit same, seed same.”

“You’d zap an entire barracks every goddamned night for months on end, huh? And that made this our choice? Screw you, Antman. You wasted our damn time. Hope it was worth it, for you to gather your uterine dust. Still haven’t answered the question, what seed?”

“Before-times military. Response given. Seed from times before, need protect, need body-warm, together time, now. For seed develop.”

“Develop? Are you telling me that you’ve been sitting on a middle-schoolers ‘seed’ for over ten years, just to suddenly thaw it out and get cooking when she is deployed to a war zone, force the rest of us to scramble a response just to keep you from scrambling the brains of half the base support staff? Couldn’t wait another couple of months, thaw out then when the only thing you gotta zap is her cats, if she has any? You creepy egg-headed assholes.” Japes punctuated the last word by walking back behind the divider to get at the secure line, check his email. And stopped dead still, one foot still in the air, one hand on the divider and the other already fumbling for his token.

In front of him, for the first time he could remember, there was a young one in the nest. A small doll-like creature, a darker gray than all the rest, with mottled brown patches like vitiligo all across. Stringy black hair hung in tangled alopecia-like patches off the over-sized head, partially obscuring one giant black almond-shaped eye with just a hint of blue at the center. The child was less than half the already small size of the others, and mucus plugged one of the simplified nostrils, trailing down into the unfinished sketch of a mouth. The blue-within-black patch at the center dodged left and right and up, the first time Japes had ever been able to read what one of Them were looking at. A low crooning, rising and falling, started to come out of the small one, and the others covered it with their own bodies, bringing it back to the pile. Outside, the wind blew sand against the walls, a scraping sound echoing through the Vault. Like fingernails on a chalkboard, words smeared to illegible smudges, but never fully erased.

“No thaw. Slow develop, slow grow. Needs warm-touch to grow straight. Strong. Our now.”

And Japes felt the cool of the nest settle in his bones, aching, a pain not as easy to forget as the reasons why…