Reunion: Chapter 2

  Kathryn stood alone fidgeting in the Presidential residence’s conference room.   Picking at her nails when she was bored was one of her few bad habits, but it was worse when she was nervous.   She’d met President Sato before but only in passing; she’d never had a formal meeting with her before.  The room had tall floor to ceiling windows, and allowed a spectacular view of the capital city.  It only seemed appropriate to her that decisions made which affected their whole society should be made here, with all of those affected by the decisions in plain sight.  Still wearing the one-piece flight suit she’d worn under her space suit earlier that day, she looked out over the city with new eyes as she clasped her hands clasped behind her back, and reflected on the day’s events.

  On the whole Kathryn was quite proud of what her people had accomplished, but she had to admit to herself that some of that pride was wrapped up in the possibility of her people being the only humans left in the galaxy.  This was never presumed to certainly be the case, but it had always been widely understood as a distinct possibility.  This possibility had always lent a certain gravity to everything they’d ever done on this planet.  It had started gnawing at here that there might be the slightest tarnish on their accomplishments as slight as it may be, a certain loss of significance however minute.

  The city she looked out on was an order of magnitude larger than any other on the planet.   It had originally been founded as two different settlements.  When they’d first arrived on the planet conflict had immediately broken out between two factions, but a lasting peace had been negotiated through both sides being content to have their own settlements.  To ensure a lasting peace, they had wisely negotiated that the two encampments should be close enough to facilitate trade, close contact, and collaboration.  It wasn’t too long before the original divides were lost in time to their ancestors.   The two peoples came to rely on each other more and more over time, and two growing communities came to overlap and merge into one beautiful city now named Twin Cities. 

  Kathryn’s people had come far.  Although their mission to this planet had originally been designed to allow them to maintain and eventually build upon the level of technology Earth had at the time they left, the conflict which broke out when they arrived had set them back considerably.  Besides the mere destruction of much of the sophisticated equipment they couldn’t repair or reproduce, there had been a significant loss of life.  According to records, between the conflict itself and the follow-on consequences in the years which followed, nearly half of the entire crew were lost.   This set them back far more than the mere loss of materiel.  

  They had arrived with what was considered the bare minimum number of personnel to maintain the level of technological and societal complexity they had launched with.   Although they had a lot of information to work from, knowledge is a living thing which reproduces by education, and know-how is something which can only be preserved by doing and teaching to do.   Attrition of knowledge and know-how as things broke down and knowledge became corrupted fell them to a nearly pre-enlightenment level of technology before they finally managed to bend the curve and begin progressing again.  

  Now five hundred years later they had rediscovered rocketry, circuitry computing, nuclear power… things which were very exciting for previous generations.   But Kathryn by her nature Kathryn had always been looking forward.  She’d read all kinds of stories about what her people had once been capable of and had long been captivated by the several museums which carefully housed and preserved the technological artifacts of the early days.  After only a few years of operation, one of the New Horizon’s two original shuttles had blown up on re-entry, but the second one lasted much longer, and had been respectfully retired to the Haven Air and Space Museum when the New Horizon itself had been likewise retired by boosting it up to high orbit.  They’d used the shuttle to do so, and that was the last time they’d been to space until today.  That was over three hundred and fifty years ago now.

  Kathryn always had her mind on the technological wonders that lay ahead of them.   She’d worked as hard as she could since early childhood towards the dream of seeing the New Horizon in person some day.  They’d been close for some time now, but only now were they confident enough to put a human on top of the barely controlled explosion of a rocket.  The risk was worth to her at least, she thought.  For her and many others, the New Horizon was the embodiment of everything they’d lost, and the promise of everything they were destined to reclaim.  It was the repository of the ancients, the home of the Gods.  It was Mount Olympus itself and she understood very well how lucky she had been to be the first to return there.

  But by a wide margin today had not gone the way anybody had planned.  This debriefing with the president had always been part of the original plan of her first launch, but things were very different now.   The original plan was for her two quarantine for two weeks and then come here for little more than a glorified photo op, an opportunity for the president to congratulate and celebrate her, to absorb some of her accomplishment by association.  Now she was here to brief the president on her encounter with Jaren and the other ship; she needed to know everything Kathryn could tell her about their visitors.

  “Commander Barnes?”  The well-dressed aide who had originally shown her into the conference room said after poking his head through the door to the office.  His demeanor seemed to apologize for his existence.  “The president will see you now.”

  “Thank you.”   Kathryn allowed herself to be led through the tall heavy wooden double doors out of the conference room and into the president’s office.

  “Ah Commander Barnes!” President Sato exclaimed.  “Yes yes, come in come in…”  The tall middle-aged woman with vaguely Asian features got up from behind her desk to greet her with an enthusiastic handshake, going so far as to clasp her second hand over it.  “You’ve had quite the day, haven’t you?” she asked with seemingly genuine sincerity.

  “Yes ma’am,” Kathryn conceded with a smile.  “As I’m sure you have as well.”  Although she’d never met the Sato more than in passing she did like her, more so the more contact she had with her.  Though her position in the military required outward political ambivalence, privately she supported Sato and her party.  Kathryn had voted for her both times and hadn’t been too disappointed with her so far. 

  The president widened her eyes with exaggeration just under her short jet-black hair with its bangs pushed to the side, and nodded as if to say ‘you have no idea.’  “Indeed”, she answered.  “I just got out of a cabinet meeting about what happened.  There were… a variety of views and opinions about how we should proceed.”

  “I can imagine.” Kathryn offered, trying not to be seen to be pushing any option over another.

  “I have to tell you Commander, a lot of people in that room want you to be a part of that mission.”

  Kathryn nodded respectfully, she made a respectful effort to mask her excitement at the idea, but deliberately not enough to leave it unclear.

  “Commander,” Sato said, gesturing to the couch in invitation.  “It’s Kathryn right, can I call you that?”

  “Of course ma’am.” Kathryn answered as she sat somewhat stiffly on the couch.  She noticed that Sato didn’t invite her to call her anything less formal than ma’am.  It would have made her uncomfortable to anyways, but it was noted that she made no reciprocal invitation.  However much she may like President Sato, a career in the military had taught her that it was best to keep a respectful distance from even the good politicians, lest you become one of their chess pieces.

  The president sat down on one of the chairs facing the couch which looked equally as uncomfortable in favour of fashion.  “I wanted to speak to you one on one.  Before we make any moves or decisions about this, I want to know your impressions of the situation, of this Jaren character.”  The woman leaned forward and clasped her hands together intently, her large dark eyes looking deeply into her own.  “Please feel free to speak openly Kathryn.  I need an honest impression; you can be assured this is just between us.  What’s your take?”

  At the invitation to sincerity, Kathryn leaned back into the couch and sighed as she put her arm up on the back of the couch and put a leg over the other.  “It’s hard to say.  The training makes me suspicious of anything too good to be true.”

  “Yes,” the president agreed with a newly serious tone, “my thoughts exactly.  Go on.”

  “While we are notionally a military, we’ve never fought any wars.  We have no rival nation ourselves.  But everything I’ve read of the military history of Earth, all of the inter-state conflict, the one clear through line is the total absence of benevolence.  Everyone always worked their angle; war was just politics by other means.  Everyone had an agenda; everyone took what they could and wars happened when they miscalculated what they could get away with.”

  “What are you driving at Commander?”

  “The thing I just can’t square is why they waited to ask.  They could have just taken the ship at any point.  They could have just snuck on and copied the archives without us ever knowing.  Why didn’t they?  Why are they now waiting for our permission to do what they have the power to do whether we like it or not?”

  “Maybe they just really want to be our friends,” the president suggested before Kathryn harumphed, and they both had a little laugh.

  “I just find myself suspicious of that.  Maybe it’s just my natural inclination though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Kathryn spared the president her personal hang up about instinctively distrusting men she was attracted to.  “The thing is it all seems logically consistent.  I can’t poke any other holes in anything he said.  Despite cautious prudence, I see no reason not to go along and see how things play out.  The fact that they don’t need us to get what they want and they’re asking anyways is a good sign that they do want to develop positive relations with us.”

  “I would have to agree,” President Sato offered.  “I’ve been trying to poke holes in his words ever since I heard them, but I’ve met with no success.  Neither have any in my cabinet other than… well, other than the same instinctive mistrust you expressed.

  Kathryn paused to speculate.  “Maybe they’re embarrassed?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well if we speculate a bit, they left deliberately without this archive and now they want it badly.  Maybe they’re not looking to get anything out of it beyond enrichment.  Maybe they’ve already surpassed whatever technical secrets are in the archives and as a people and this is genuinely about reconnecting with their ancient culture.”

  “And how would that explain their reluctance to take it by force?”

  “Maybe they have a sense of humility.  Maybe they know they made a mistake then and don’t want to compound it by further bad acts now.  Maybe they’re trying to be better as a people now and getting that archive is part of it and taking it by force would defeat the whole point of getting it.”

  “Interesting.   A stretch for sure,” Sato reflected.   “We also have no idea if this is a civilizational imperative for them or a smaller group of researchers.  For all we know, these people could be a faction at odds with the rest of their society.”

  “We have to find out.” Kathryn stated with certainty.

  “Indeed.   Either we’ve just had a world changing gift dropped in our laps out of the blue, or…”

  “Or?” Kathryn asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Or he has an alternate agenda.”  The president seemed to be staring into space beside Kathryn’s head as she considered the possibility.  “What if… what if the whole story about the archives is just a rouse?  What if there is something else they want which they are carefully avoiding mentioning at all.”

  “This is certainly possible,” Kathryn conceded.  “I just can’t imagine what that might be though.  I can’t imagine what a people so far advanced beyond us technologically could possibly want from us other than cultural information they can’t get or generate anywhere else by any other means.  With instantaneous access to multiple star systems, they effectively have access to infinite natural resources so they can’t want anything we have in that respect.   Presumably they have a biotechnical sophistication equivalent to their physics, so they should be able to manufacture for themselves any biological materials they could find here.  We certainly had that kind of technology when we left Earth, but there was nothing like their rift technology, that’s all them.   They’re way beyond us.  If what they say about the Earth is true though…”   Kathryn shook her head slowly as she thought.

  “That there is nothing to recover there?” the president clarified.

  “Yes.   If that really is true, then old Earth cultural really is the only resource in the entire galaxy which they can’t get elsewhere or manufacture for themselves.  In that case the New Horizon archive is literally the only source and repository in the whole universe.”

  “But again,” the president reiterated, “why not just take it from us by force?  We both know they wouldn’t even need to, they could have taken it a long time ago without telling us, or just copied it and we’d never even know.  Why all the nicety?”

  Kathryn nibbled at the inside of her cheek as she considered the question.  It was a good one.  She shrugged.  “Maybe we are a cultural resource for them as well.”

  “Go on.”

  “We are the inheritors of that culture in ways that they are not, a continuity of it in comparison to their deliberate break from it.  We are necessarily linked.  Maybe the contents of the archives lose some value to them if we don’t choose to share it with them.  Maybe to them we are a living sequel of what it can reveal.  Maybe to honour it, they must honour us.  Our stories, our art, our… ways of seeing the world, our friendship and collaboration, these are all things which they can’t also freely have if they wrong us.”

  “So you’re suggesting they just really are good earnest people,” President Sato surmised with a touch of skepticism.

  “All I can say ma’am, is that that is the impression I got in speaking to him.   I’ve dealt with some unsavoury characters in my time, come up against more than one wolf in sheep’s clothing.   I sensed none of that from Jaren.   Almost to an eerie degree I felt nothing negative from him.  It sounds corny but… I genuinely got the sense he was ‘pure of heart’.”  She mimed air quotes.

  “I hope that doesn’t translate to he’s attractive.” Sato said, seeming to test her.   Kathryn allowed her indignant anger at the suggestion to show through enough for the president to see it unambiguously.  

  Sato put her hands up in surrender.  “Fair enough.   I’d be far more worried about a male officer being bamboozled by an attractive woman.  It’s happened enough I had to ask.

  Kathryn deftly changed the subject, quite annoyed at president but now working harder to conceal it.  “I think a priority is to clarify if he is speaking for his people at large or if he is more representing a small group of academics or something.” 

  “So you’re in then Commander?  You think that we should co-operate for now and see what happens?”

  “Well ma’am my position is obviously quite different from yours.  I’m in of course no matter, what but I’m only responsible for myself.  If there was an eighty-five percent chance of doom and only a fifteen percent chance of wondrous discovery, my curiosity would compel me to find out based on the scale of the potential rewards.  But I don’t have the responsibility of our whole civilization on my shoulders the way you do.  I personally think it’s worth the risk, but I can only speak for myself.”

  The president leaned back and put draped both arms down along the back of the chair.   Eighty-five fifteen, I trust those aren’t the actual odds you’re giving?”

  “No ma’am, just the numbers I pulled out of my butt for the odds it would be worth to me.   Ninety percent odds of doom didn’t feel like they could weigh out the potential rewards but eighty felt worth risking more.”

  Sato laughed.   “You ever thought about getting into politics Barnes?”

  “No ma’am,” she answered quickly with a nervous smile.

  “Well you should think about it,” she suggested as she stood up.  “I think you’d have a knack for it,” she said as she extended her hand out to Kathryn.  “You might surprise yourself; I suspect you’d be a natural.”

  “Thank you,” Kathryn answered as she stood to meet her and respectfully shook her hand.

  “Thank you for your thoughts on this.  I’ll be in touch.  Lionel will show you out.”

  Kathryn was slightly startled to find him already standing right beside her.  “Good day Madame President,” Kathryn offered formally before turning to allow herself to be led out. 

  “Barnes?” the president asked as they approached the door.  Kathryn turned around to see Sato looking out over the city behind her desk in front of the large floor to ceiling windows with her hands clasped behind her back.  

  “Some of my cabinet feel that as the first person we’ve sent into space you are now a national treasure, an icon too valuable to put at further, that we should effectively put you in a glass cage and put you on display the rest of your life.”   She turned around to face them again.   “Maybe get you into politics,” she said with a raised eyebrow.

  Kathryn let ten percent of her revulsion at the idea show through.  It was still more than she felt she probably should have.

   “However, I’m not one of them.  Talent and experience are terrible things to waste.  I assume if we decide to proceed with this Jaren character that you would be willing to form and lead the team that would be working with him?”

  Kathryn’s heart leapt.  She’d barely let herself dare hope she’d have the chance to be a member of the team let alone be asked to lead it.  “Um… yes ma’am, of course,” she stammered.  “Thank you, ma’am,” she added with enthusiastic appreciation.  

  The president nodded with a wry smile before turning back to the windows, and when Lionel held his hand out, she allowed herself to be led out of the room.