Part I
“The Hangar Dialogue”
By Jase Short
The hangar’s mouth yawned. It was really happening again. This time—I told myself—I would not break out into a sweat.
With a wave of his grease-stained palms, Colonel Linder led the way into the darkened space lit only by the faintest glow of instrumental panels. They lined the walls like sentries, running complex equations to keep the hastily—but meticulously—constructed “inner hanger” up and running. The mesh was simple enough I had been told, made of superconductive material. A “Faraday Cage.” Electromagnetic signals didn’t get in, and they didn’t get out either. We were more concerned with the ones trying to get out.
My visits had been frequent since I’d arrived three months prior after a long flight out of Alberta. I had been in conversation with colleagues in the Communications Branch of the National Research Council (CBNRC). I didn’t fully comprehend the COMSEC technologies of either of our governments, but I knew how to talk to the geeks and get the goods out of them. I’d grown up around academics from the humanities and the sciences in Boston. During the war, I even got to work with the team that cracked the enigma code. My superiors thought I had a Midas’ touch on these affairs—breakthroughs followed me wherever I was sent. I knew better.
“We’ve got hi—uh, we’ve got the guest ready for you, sir.”
Not a single medal on my coat, just standard issue man going to work fare, but this ribboned Colonel still deferred to me. The social decorum of intelligence work never ceased to vex me. I never knew what face to wear in an encounter with someone. Doubly worse when working in Asia. Layers of Confucianism spread across the borders like the scars of an old disease, clinging to communists and traditionalists alike.
It didn’t get any easier when talking to the guest.
Three consecutive doors—each with guards, each with another layer of Faraday cage. I wondered absently if this setup didn’t do a number on our brains. Eggshell walls on either side billowed, exhaling. I’d never get used to it.
“When you pass though the zeta corridor, it’s going to get disorienting. The entire—”
With a hand wave I pushed passed him. I knew the drill. I got up this morning. I didn’t put led between my eyes after thinking about it last night.
I stepped through.
Good morning, David. The usual?
Its sense of humor grew with each session.
“Sure. State your name.” I looked down at my notes significantly. Long silence drew in front of me. Finally I looked up and met my reflection in its’ eyes. “For the record.”
Much better. The nod came too late. Off key again. I am speaking directly to you and you comprehend me. I speak to you in symbols you have provided me with. It’s taxing and slow. But you understand me and you can record me this way. But I want you to understand before we go further.
My hands shook as the vertigo hit. I closed my eyes, pinched the glassed off the tip of my nose, and held myself like a child until it passed. I tried to describe it in my report once but stopped after receiving angry feedback from my superiors. They didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t speak to anyone about it. Couldn’t write about it in my diary. Couldn’t even think about it too long—the feeling would come back like a familiar bully on the playground. Sometimes I felt it when I was enjoying myself in conversation with someone. It would get quiet inside and I’d feel that—something like vertigo anyway. And something like fear but, just, more elemental than fear. Like, where fear came from. That’s how I’d described it.
You’re supposed to be here, you know.
I looked up. The blurry vision without my glasses was indistinct. I preferred it. “Yes, my boss has assigned me to talk to you, again. At great personal cost, I might add.”
It tried to shake its head but it looked wrong. I opened my palm out. It looked through them and out the other side.
Something to show me?
Sighing, I spat, “Damnit no. Did you mean to shake your head ‘no’? Because I can’t—”
I understood before but I’m trying something out. To make my presence less off putting and more human for you.
“It’s off putting that you are trying to act like a human, you understand?”
‘Uncanny.’ That’s a funny word. From Freud, I see?
“What do you mean when you say you ‘see’? And how do you do that, exactly?”
‘See’? With my eyes of course, Jack.
I blinked at him.
Sorry, trying to be human again. Not working for you. Alright my name, for the record, recorded in stunningly low bandwidth language of a Flatlander, could be called Theopteryx. ‘God-wing,’ in your scientific language. Not my species mind you, that’s the name that was given to me on my naming day. But it’s more like a species name than your proper names. I adapt it to your style of communication. It does not have an audible sound in our form of communication.
“Which is?”
What you call language.
“No, it isn’t,” I pushed my notes back from me. Folding my arms and looking to the back corner, I mused, “Language involves sound. The sound we transcribe into symbols. But the symbols just refer to the sounds. The sounds, together, convey information. That information is successfully conveyed when both parties, by prior agreement, comprehend the information passed by the stitching together of different sounds. That’s language. You make people feelthings and call that language. What do you call it, Theo?”
It noticeably stiffened. Perhaps a response that evolution arrived at many times over the eons. More human than the attempts at humor.
I relaxed and looked down at my notes again. “ ‘Psionics’ is a pseudo-science for us, but you say it’s just your common sense. How is that?”
Better than your usual questions, Doug.
“Why can’t you get my name right? You are so precise about yours. Is this another attempt at humor?”
Perhaps…something like ‘barely-concealed malice’ instead of humor? Is it working?
“No.”
A pity. What you call ‘psionics’ is what we call ‘language.’ It’s a bit faster than yours. You break it up into infinitely malleable sound particles. You fuse these together to make meaning molecules. When you put a lot of them together in a working organ you’ve got yourself a language. When you group the organs into a system you’ve got a culture. We can do all of that without tedious scaffolding. It’s like, you are familiar with your own mathematics enough to get this—its like when you spend enough time with geometry, you start to just see the theorems when you see the shapes, no? It’s also maybe what you experience with those you are so close to you can assume they know how you feel even if your words are liars.
“No capability to conceal, then?”
None whatsoever.
I jotted the metaphors down as it added: Other than the method you’ve surrounded us with. Theo’s almond eyes rippled as he took in the mesh above his head.
Without the cage, you know I could just step out of here, right?
“How?”
It turned—and was gone.
Like this.
“Please don’t hide again. It’s very upsetting.”
OK. I’m sorry Jason. It slid back into place.
I nodded my acceptance. “Proceed.”
With what?
“Just…tell me more. Please. If you can ‘see’ into my mind you should have a good idea of what I’m going to ask next.”
Only if you do, too.
“Well I guess I don’t then. Fine. How can you do this? How is it possible?”
Our eyes are very sensitive. They don’t just take in information, they can bend it. We bend the information it takes in—it makes the point we want to make. We skip the ‘middle man’ so to speak, and thus ‘speak’ to each other without the labor of grammar. Satisfied?
“What effect does this have on your—your—”
‘People’?
“If you can call them that.”
I do.
“OK fine, what effect does it have?”
We are remarkably well-behaved.
“I’d imagine that’s a consequence of being unable to deceive.”
You’re fast, for a Flatlander..
“Why do you call me that?”
I call all of you that because of the book you read.
“I don’t remember it.”
Well your body does and I can read if off of you. Most of it anyway. It does a good job of making sense of things on your behalf. Pick it up again.
“I don’t have the time.”
I’ll help.
“I don’t want your help. The last time you did that you—” I cracked. I sobbed. Choked it back. Warmth spread down my limbs. It was like receiving a big maternal hug from the bully who’d just knocked your wind out.
I’m sorry Jason. It was not my intent to make you remember things you wish’d you could forget. But better now than later. When you die you’ll have to remember all of it.
“How would you know what happens when we die?”
I know what happens when you die.
I pushed the chair back from the table and tossed my pen at the door. “Open up. I need to come up for air.”
I was soaked in sweat.
On the other side of the door, the long shadows of the afternoon stretched before me. “How long’s it been?” I asked between the starter puffs of my smoke.
The freshly-showered Colonel looked at his watch. He was wearing combat fatigues now. “About eight hours. What was your time?”
I spat and grumbled. “Still no pattern. About 15 minutes. If that.”
“Je-zus,” he whistled and took a drag off his own. “How can you plan around that?”
“I can’t.”
Stitched into the purple sky hung an alien moon—a body so close, but still out of reach. And this thing just casually slipped out of rooms and across the galaxy. And it made me feel things I didn’t want to feel. I hated it so goddamned much.