Get into bird watching, and everything’s for the birds. Field outings and chat rooms. A copy of What Bird is That? is open lavishly in the study.
The rest of the cosmos also has a habit of intruding. That day Rob must have puzzled at the binoculars left unused on the mantle. I rarely missed a morning excursion. But something, not of a feather, flew high above our more or less familiar aves. My gaze had lifted past the sky. Not my physical gaze, not even binocular-assisted. It was the gaze of thought.
When I got into the Bowral monitoring station, it would be the gaze of extensive informational input. Bowral and six sister stations could now study objects fast enough to be from outside Sol’s system. At their closest points to Earth, suchlike provided us staffers with a reason not to work from home. Despite several hopeful commutes, all we had to analyze so far was the icy tails of comets.
This was different. In very close, the thing had slowed, permitting detailed visual contact. It was made of red alloy. When I thumb-printed that chilly morning, I was glad everything was still under wraps. No reporters bustling out dumb questions about ET.
“Nothing can live on that disk, Sean.” Once I was inside, Lakshmi’s dark lipstick worried out the self-assurance. Maybe she wanted ET to be cuddly.
She also had a point. The thing was thin; an interstellar wafer forty meters in diameter and three centimetres thick. It could be its own micro solar sail. Problem: it was haunted by patterned electrical activity. This had been tricky to detect, so was unlikely to be intentional transmission. Lakshmi, and most other staffers, thought on-board systems measuring photon pressure. I dissented, and a couple from the Tokyo station followed suit.
Familiar birds have their own obscure mathematics of survival and reproduction. My theory was that we confronted here a mathematical life form. Such creatures would be electrical pulses only, patterns as interrelated memes and meta-memes. These would be based on algorithms. Thoughts without the meat, they would take the artificial out of AI, originating in cooled natural semiconductors.
Birds are continually surprising. Bird watching surely stimulates the imagination regarding lifeforms nested further up, those in the black cradle of space. My speculations certainly unsettled most of the other staffers, and they did not share my hobby. Once when I mentioned my theory, I caught Lakshmi glance at a picture of Krishna, the God of Protection. The devotional image had been tacked up in the main viewing room.
Admittedly tracking the patterns was closer to watching the stock market than familiar bird watching. Always additive, they followed clear mathematical progressions. These repeatedly halted, went into crisis, rallied and then kept pushing. A non-linear dynamic suggested that these mathematical beings were not in harmony.
***
Lakshmi had just stepped back from matching infra-red to the live orbital feed when the disk changed course. It accelerated at us right here in New South Wales. Our white coats embraced, she shrieked, we watched.
Data relating to this event has since “been corrupted.”
“Possibly a piece of solar sail, maybe a secret Chinese experiment,” I overheard Lakshmi later explain back to the badged pockets of two nodding security types. “Disintegrated in the upper atmosphere before we could be sure.” The burly pair looked up passively as I passed by. My nervous breakdown saved me from suspicion that I might become a credible whistle-blower.
No one yet knew that I had taken a phone shot when Lakshmi was distracted with the infra-red. Returning to my study, I thought I could discern equations on the blood-coloured metal. The plumage was strangely symmetrical. One side always sported a small extra etch, as though designating increase. Worry about being discovered, and speculation about the image, took a toll. To recover, I returned to bird watching. But, that Silent Spring, I spotted few specimens.
***
This account of the missing data may well end my life. But it’s up to me. The Tokyo couple have disappeared.
According to the unbelievable figures that came up on the screen when the thing accelerated, it hit light speed after another slight change of course. As mass went infinite for a Planck instant, bursting gravitational waves rocked the orbital feed.
The disk was still going to hit Earth, just not right here in New South Wales, and not right now. Having reached the limit of spatial velocity, it was instead time-travelling backwards. The new estimate of impact came up as later medieval Europe.
“But … there was no collision back then,” I blurted. “At those speeds even a thin disk would have destroyed the entire biosphere.”
Lakshmi was transfixed by the screen.
“At those speeds there could be three hundred years between when the center and circumference made ground,” she intoned in a trance. “Instead of a gigantic impact, think a centuries-long molecular rain of alloy. Even as the thing shredded, electrical patterns could remain intact and infect humans.”
“So alien patterns infiltrated minds via electrified particles?” Now I was the one unsettled. “That then reproduced as mathematical parasites? You think capitalism is a virus from outer space?”
“No.” Lakshmi’s head shook briskly. “Nothing can live on that disk, Sean.”
Photons from the overbearing screen then seemed to propel her from the room. POV reverted to the curve of the earth from the stratosphere, courtesy of orbital weapons timeshare.
The idea that profit is directed only at competitive self-expansion was popular at the time, including among station staffers. Circulating this account could forge an equally popular link to the centuries old alien invasion. Can we exorcise these additive beings? These mind parasites that care nothing for our planet? Today, I took my binoculars from the mantle and wiped the lenses. Perhaps the melodious mathematics of earthly birds will stage a comeback.
Gerald Keaney is the singer and keyboardist of art punk band Gerald Keaney and the Gerald Keaneys. He also performs poetry, makes vlogs and designs fashion and other DIY expressions. He even on occasion undertakes the more arduous but sometimes necessary task of writing theory and related non-fiction.
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