Ctrl-Alt-Delete

by David Gray

 

“Control, you’re going to want to see this.”

Ever since those words came back from the Mars mission, I’ve been glued to the television, excited about what it means and what’s next. Today, they’re finally releasing the first photographs of the artifact, and I can’t wait.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” my boyfriend jokes. “If it looks like an egg, I’m not watching.”

“Don’t be silly,” I answer. “This is a historical singularity! Everything will be different from this moment on. We’re lucky to be alive to witness this first contact.”

The NASA talking head drones on, “Terraforming operations have been postponed in the wake of this momentous discovery. Both the Polar Outpost and the Equatorial Rover have turned their attention to…”

“I’m sorry to hear they’re postponing your project,” my boyfriend says, sitting next to me and taking my hand. “You must be disappointed, after all the work you did on those bacteria.”

This is true, but the disappointment is buried under excitement. Sure, I spent my graduate and postdoctoral training on the carbon-assimilation genes for those terraforming bacteria, but this is more important. Seeding Mars with engineered life can wait a few days, but I can’t wait another second for a glimpse of the big discovery.

“Just show us the artifact!” I yell at the screen when they cut yet again to an expert in Mars geology. Sure, Valles Marineris is fascinating, but that’s not what anybody on Earth wants to see. They’ve been teasing it for hours, but all NASA has released is a photo of the happy landing team standing next to the artifact. From what I can see, it’s a spiky object, shiny, about the size of a baseball, floating a meter off the ground. It’s been so frustrating! The picture reveals almost nothing, and they keep cutting to endless “experts,” as if anybody really knows anything about alien artifacts. This momentous discovery is quickly becoming a media circus.

“Can I get you a drink?” my boyfriend asks. “Maybe a beer?”

“Thanks, love. Sorry for yelling.” Once again, I realize it must be difficult living with a scientist.

A NASA representative interrupts the expert, saying, “We just got word that the Equatorial Rover team has located a second artifact!”

“Aargh!” I yell again. Unsurprisingly, this momentous announcement is accompanied by another disappointing photograph with different space-suited figures and the rover in the background, and a tiny glinting dot floating next to them.

“I’m not surprised,” the expert says when the program cuts back to her, because that’s what experts do. Talk and talk and talk. “Valles Marinerus exposes some of the oldest…”

“Maybe I’ll get you something stronger,” my considerate boyfriend suggests, resigning himself to an afternoon of my frustrated grouchiness. “How about some margaritas?”

It looks like it’s going to be a long day.

#

“Damn it all,” I lament, “it’s the first day all over again!” I’m reminded of the frustratingly slow dribble of information, all those years ago, when NASA first revealed photos of the artifact, teasing the big reveal.

“Patience, hon,” my husband says, taking my hand. “I’m sure it’s in here somewhere.”

We’ve been waiting in line for three hours to get in the front door of the Smithsonian exhibit, and now that we’ve entered, all we see are walls covered with displays. We slog through room after room, edging step by slow step closer to the star attraction.

I don’t spend any time interacting with the exhibits, since I’ve been following every development in the scientific literature, but in the fifth room, my husband pulls me toward a display and says, “Isn’t this your work?”

Sure enough, one entire wall presents the engineering of our bacteria, including a small panel describing the work I did with my advisor. I feel a flush of pride at being part of such a seminal effort in the history of humanity. I force myself to spend a few minutes with the real-time video feed of the polar site, showing mats of bacteria growing strong and healthy at the edge of the ice, slowly but steadily pumping oxygen into the thin Mars atmosphere. The terraforming will take centuries, but I was there, playing my small part, at the beginning.

Now I’m really excited.

The entire crowd rushes, without stopping, through the section on the search for life, since the expedition found absolutely nothing, exactly like all the previous unmanned Mars landings. No fossils, no canals, no evocative organics frozen in polar ice. Mars is and always has been a dead planet, apart from one visit by extrasolar entities at some unknown time in the past. Not that the planet is dead any longer, with my bacteria already gaining a firm toehold.

After three rooms of Mars geology, we finally reach the artifact exhibit. The crowd is buzzing. I pull my husband through a maze of displays: videos of the discovery, the first contact with the polar artifact and discovery of the others, challenges with transport of a gravity-defying object across interplanetary space, years of study of that antigravity, still a mystery, and an extensive presentation of the multidimensional aspects of the artifacts. There’s no need to stop and look…I know from my reading that even now, after more than a decade of study, nobody has a clue what they do or how they do it.

Finally, we settle into the long queue for our audience with the actual artifact. The room is dimly lit, and as we inch along the roped-off switchbacks, the artifact looms larger and larger, floating in a perspex case and illuminated by a single spotlight. The museum director obviously wanted some drama, and it’s certainly heightening my anticipation.

“Look,” I say, grabbing my husband’s hand when we’re close enough to see that the line flows almost all the way around the display case. “We’ll be able to walk around it! So it will be easy to see it change, you know, change shape from different angles.”

He smiles and squeezes my hand and says, “That sounds exciting, dear.”

“Everybody seems to be stopping on the far side,” I continue. “That must be the direction you can see the prime vertex.”

I’ve been reading about the non-physical aspects of the artifact for years and can’t wait to see actual non-Euclidean multidimensionality in person. Already, I can tell it’s going to be difficult to force myself to yield my spot once I get there.

Three switchbacks away, the vertices are easily visible, and I already see some shape-shifting as we inch back and forth, closer and closer. The artifact is beautiful, well worth the wait, flashing like a spiky diamond in the spotlight. Almost there!

My husband suddenly grabs my arm, pointing to the exit on the far side of the room.

“Hon, something’s up,” he warns.

The noise level of the room ratchets up as dozens of soldiers march into the room, corralling everyone back away from the artifact. They converge with classic riot-control shields to create a blockade around the artifact. Dozens more move toward us, slowly but inexorably disassembling the ropes for the line and forcing us out of the room.

There’s nothing we can do but join the herd of people crowding back. There’s an emergency exit in the middle of the multidimensionality signage, and before we know it, we’re out on the sidewalk in the noonday sun.

“That was disappointing!” I say. “So close, but so far. I wonder what’s up?”

My husband is busy on his phone, and soon says, “Uh oh. This can’t be good. They’re showing up all over.”

“What?”

“Artifacts. In cities across the world. Paris, London…and people are panicking. This isn’t good at all.”

“That’s impossible. The Mars mission only brought back the one, and all the studies have shown it’s entirely inert.”

“Well, something’s up. Maybe that’s changing.”

The DC Mall is swarming with military by now, funneling people away from the Smithsonian and fortifying the White House and Congress.

“Let’s get out while we can,” I suggest.

We dash back to our rental car through the scattering crowds of tourists, and the traffic is fierce getting out of the parking structure, but we finally get on the highway out of Washington.

An hour later, as I steer us through Baltimore, my husband gives me moment-to-moment updates, glued to his phone.

“People are dying in London. Everybody. My god, it’s terrible…BBC is showing views from those cameras they have around the city, and they say people just stop moving wherever they are and fall to the ground. Another artifact just showed up in Buenos Aires…and one in Tokyo. Um…everybody on the BBC feed just…um…died. Really, just then. They’re all dead, right there in the studio. Um, let me see if I can find another site. Russia and China are blaming us and there are some scary threats coming from Moscow. They say the original one in DC is controlling…”

He’s interrupted by a blinding flash from far behind us.

“Is that what I think it is?” my husband asks, remarkably calm, but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. That flash has haunted every generation since Hiroshima, and it was simply a matter of time until somebody got an itchy finger. But strangely, it feels like a familiar threat when compared with what’s happening now.

“Afraid so,” I answer, looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing the iconic cloud roiling high into the sky. I try to keep it calm and practical, because what else can we do? “I think we’re far enough away. Brace yourself for the shock wave, but I don’t think we’ll have problems with radiation, at least right away.”

The shock wave booms over us, whipping the trees into a frenzy, but the car protects us from flying debris. We got off easy.

He asks, ever the practical one. “What should we do?”

“Cut our vacation short, obviously. I think we should avoid big cities. Let’s skip New York and head inland. Maybe we can find a secluded place to hole up for a while until it all settles down.”

#

“What do you want to do?” I ask my husband. We scrounged up enough sleeping pills months ago from the local town, but never discussed if we were going to use them.

He says, putting on a brave face, “I think I want to experience it. It will be my last experience, after all.”

I pull him in for a hug, and say, “I love you, and I’m glad we’re doing this together.”

I should be thankful. We lasted longer than most, holed up in this mountain cabin, almost six months. Television and the internet stopped months ago, which is just as well because it was nothing but bad news. Maybe it was our fault, like they said on all the broadcasts…the scientists, consumed by our curiosity, opening this one final Pandora’s box. Whoever’s to blame, it’s too late now. We optimistically stockpiled enough food to last the winter, but it seems now that we won’t need it.

An artifact appeared this morning, floating quietly over the glassy surface of the lake.

“I suppose you’ll want to go look at it,” he says. After our many years together, he knows me so well. I’ll be a scientist right down to my last breath.

“Yes, actually, I would, since it’s right here. Do you want to come?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m going to make some brownies. I’ll see you when you get back.”

I row slowly, approaching, and it’s just as interesting and enigmatic as I imagined. The videos didn’t do it justice. It sparkles in the sun, reflecting all the colors of the trees and sky and water, a thousand glimmering planes of silver and gold folded into an ever-changing star. I stop the boat next to it and lift the oar, giving it a gentle tap. It’s completely invulnerable—they can survive a nuclear blast, after all—but it seems wrong to mistreat it, despite the inevitable task it’s here to perform.

I tap it again, aiming for one of the spikes, and the shape morphs as it spins, brilliant, sparkling with hidden depths. Those depths never revealed their secrets, even to the world’s sharpest minds, and I’m certainly not going to pluck a last-minute reprieve from its shifting complexity. My story, and my husband’s, is proceeding now to its inevitable end. An hour or a day? There’s no telling.

I toy for just a moment with coaxing it back to shore, but why? I’ve seen it and it’s not going to change. They always look like this, watching, waiting, inexorably executing their solemn duty.

As I row back and the artifact dwindles behind me, I ponder the future. By all expectations, it will be easy, pleasurable even. Generalized euphoria and then all nerve action will simply…stop. We really couldn’t ask for anything more humane. And after? Everybody speculated, but nobody knows. The UFO people were certain we’ll wake up in a new world, and organized religions, naturally, had their own promises, but that’s never been my credo. I imagine I’ll simply leave my body here on Earth as nourishment for this beautiful forest. Why else would these artifacts remove only a single species, Homo sapiens, from the entire Earth? Thinking about it, it really is a beautiful way to end my existence.

“That smells great!” I say when I get back to the cabin. The smell of baking brownies is familiar and oh-so comforting. My husband always knows the perfect thing to do in any situation.

“Almost ready,” he says. “Let’s sit out on the porch and watch the birds. It’s a beautiful day. Do you want a glass of milk? Or a beer?”

“Oh, I think a cold beer would be nice.”

“Perfect. Why don’t you set us up on the porch swing? I’ll bring out the brownies.”

I grab a vase and the kitchen scissors and dash out to the small flower garden, picking a few daisies to add some cheer to the small wooden table. I grab two glasses and pour the beer, so we don’t need to drink directly from the bottle. I fluff up the cushions on the swing, and we’re ready to go.

My handsome husband plops down next to me, laying out the plate of brownies and picking up his glass of beer.

“To us,” he says, clunking his glass with mine and taking a deep draught.

He takes my hand and gives me a kiss, and we sample the brownies, gazing out over the forest and lake, hearing the birdsong and the wind in the trees, the song of the Earth, and I feel it, feel it in the warmth of his hand and the smell of pine and the taste of chocolate. Happiness, to be here, with him.