Contact Us by Al Macy Page A

found me, that article certainly would have flushed me out.
    * * *
    June 8, 2018
    In the Ruby Mountain conference room, Charli sat with McGraw, puzzling over one of the drawings from the device plans that Cronkite had uploaded. Some plans made immediate sense while others were as confusing as an abstract painting. She admired McGraw’s enthusiasm for solving these puzzles.
    “And I have absolutely no idea what this device does,” McGraw said.
    They both looked up as Maddix Young came in and sat across from them.
    “Seth, I’m glad you’re here. This extraterrestrial stuff has caught me flat-footed. Can you bring me up to speed on SETI? Just a quick summary.”
    Charli put her tablet down. “You’re wondering, now that we know ETs are out there, why we hadn’t detected them.”
    “Yeah. Pretty much.”
    “Ready for the quick and dirty answer?” asked McGraw.
    “Ready,” said Young.
    “Okay, there are a few ways that we might discover an alien civilization. First, they notice our TV and radio signals, which leak out into space. When they see we are here, they send us a tightly beamed message to say, ‘We see you. You are not alone.’”
    “Is that likely?” Young asked.
    McGraw shook his head. “No. Here’s why. Even though there are billions of stars in the galaxy, most are too far away. Think about this: Radio was first broadcast around 1910. Let’s say a planet with advanced beings is only seventy five light-years away, much closer than most. In the almost-impossible event that they did notice our first weak broadcasts, they wouldn’t have noticed until 1985.”
    “I’m starting to see the problem,” said Young.
    “Exactly. If in 1985 ET hops to it and sends a powerful signal right back to us, it would take another seventy-five years for us to receive it. It won’t get here until the year 2060.”
    “Okay, why can’t we just detect their TV transmissions?”
    “Those signals are just too weak. We don’t have equipment sensitive enough to detect them.”
    The president and Gordon Guccio bustled into the conference room. Charli checked her watch.
    Guccio raised his eyebrows and jerked his head back when he saw Charli. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
    She frowned. What’s going on? “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be here?”
    “Shouldn’t you be out looking for Bubble Boy?” It got a good laugh from everyone but Charli.
    The heat rose into her cheeks. Golubkhov’s prediction about seeing the man Charli loves in a bubble had gone viral within the bunker. “Very funny. I don’t know what made me share that with anyone. You know, maybe she meant ‘bubble- head ’ and she was talking about you, Gordon.”
    Seth McGraw sang a few measures from the song “Tiny Bubbles.” It was so shocking and so out of character that everyone stopped and stared at him then burst into laughter. He had a pretty good voice, too. Young clapped him on the shoulder.
    “I swear,” Hallstrom said “that you guys all joined the government just for the laughs. Now you’ve even infected Seth. Can we pretend, for a second, that we are serious people running the strongest nation on earth, and that the human race is threatened?” He looked around. “Okay?”
    Hallstrom sat down. “Okay. We’re here to talk about the plans that Cronkite uploaded, see what Seth has figured out about them, and decide what to do. Seth?”
    “Right. Well, we knew that Cronkite’s civilization has learned our language, knows our history or they have some kind of universal translator. So it’s not a big surprise that he has access to our internet. The plans just appeared on WikiLeaks for anyone to see.”
    Guccio cut in, “We tried denying access to the site, to keep the plans private, but that wasn’t practical. The instant they appeared, they went viral. You can see them on sites like AlienPlans.org and MyFavoriteMartian.com.”
    Hallstrom said, “Stay serious, Gordon.”
    “No, that’s a real web site devoted to