It had been about an hour since the black sedan with tinted windows had picked him up from the Las Vegas airport. He had to assume it was the CIA, the same people that had hired him and paid for his flight from Japan to Vegas. Yeah, that worked out well. They made it for the earliest flight once I had agreed to come. They didn’t even give me enough time to upgrade the seats. Fifteen hour flight in coach, not fun. Anthony Marcus thought to himself. He always hated those long flights and tended to make sure he was in first class, especially when he seemed to get sat next to the people wanting to sleep on his shoulder. Thankfully there were no crying babies on his flight.
Anthony was a multilingual translator working in Japan and would contract out for the United Sates government from time to time, but never stayed after his job was finished; there were too many constrictions on what he could and couldn’t do. He did like that they always had unique jobs for him that broke the monotony, like when they had needed a document translated from Farsi to Chinese. But this time was different; the amount they had offered for three months’ worth of work and the promise of rights to publish a paper on any discoveries he made once it was made public was too much to resist. All they would tell him was that it had to do with a new language they had discovered. More than likely someone had invented a new language, conlang, and they needed someone to figure out what it meant. He had spent most of his life around language and learned most of them so that he could see more of the world, except for the one he had learned because of a cute girl in school. After that he started looking at conlangs like Klingon and Esperanto; looking at their strengths and weaknesses and proposing that preconceived notions would always limit what new languages could truly do.
The sedan slowed down and stopped but the tinted windows kept their occupant from seeing out into where they were parked until the driver came around and opened up the door to the back seat. As the door opened, Anthony was blinded by the harsh light of the sun in the desert. He stepped out onto a large salt flat and saw that the vehicle was parked in the middle of the flat, next to a squarish two story building with what appeared to be a flat roof. It was utilitarian and an off white color with windows only on the second level. He thought he could see a building to the left, but it was too far away to be sure. There were a few other cars, but not many, most were black and polished. The man that had opened the door for him was also the driver and a monster of a man. At what looked like six foot five inches and 300 pounds, he was easily taller than the six foot linguist he was escorting.
Before Anthony could take a good look at the surrounded area, he was escorted through a steel door into the utilitarian building. The first thing he noticed was the size, the roof was a good fourteen feet above the cement flooring. The first floor was a single room at least 150 feet across and 100 feet wide. There was a bank of workstations which contained computers and other doodads he had no clue the function of in front of the door, and a white plastic enclosure in the middle of the room and a set of stairs against the other wall to his left. There were large pieces of expensive looking scientific machines pushed up against the walls; with a group of men working around a small treaded robot in front of the white ‘tent’. What have I gotten myself into? He started to worry; experience told him it was too late to back out though, so he continues to follow his guide up the stairs
As they ascended the stairs, Anthony became more and more nervous, especially upon seeing the mass of cubicles at the top of the stairs. The second floor had a wall running through the middle of it that connected the two longer walls, leaving an almost squarish room full of people working in casual suits. As they walked past the cubicles toward the door in the middle of the wall, he could feel several eyes on him. The farther they progressed through the building, the more trepidation the translator felt. This wasn’t a small operation; this setup had to have a major budget, which more than likely meant ‘national security’.
Can this possibly get any worse? He asked himself as they exited out into a small hallway. To his left were two restrooms, each clearly labeled for men or women. Across from him were two more doors, one said ‘dining’ while the other said ‘Director’ and had a small red couch next to it.
He was stopped on his way to sit down by the gruff voice of the guard. “No. You’re expected.” The guard uttered as he opened the door.
As Anthony entered the room the bottom dropped out of his stomach. “I guess it can.” He muttered, hoping that only he could hear it as he spotted the red-haired woman in a business suit sitting at the desk.
The President of the United States indicated the chair on his side of the desk. “Please sit Mr. Marcus, There’s a bit we have to discuss.” As he moved toward one of the two chairs, he could hear the door close behind him. She opened up a file on her desk and looked through it as he took a seat. Anthony took a moment to look around the room; everything was nicely furnished in dark woods and plush red fabric. He was broken out of his reverie as his President started speaking to him again. “Looks like you are well qualified. Good education, good schools but no PhD. Why?” She looked back up at him expecting an answer.
“Well, Ma’am.” He took a calming breath and tried to make sure he kept breathing. “A PhD is rather pointless for translation and is only needed for teaching at a University and required more work than I felt it was worth.”
“It also states that you know; what is it, six or seven languages fluently and have published a few papers on the purpose of constructed languages. Was that not a lot of work?” President Tow enquired, trying to determine what his reaction would be.
“Well, that was more for fun. Besides, I really don’t want to teach.” Anthony replied. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, what am I doing here? This sounds an awful lot like an interview, and as far as I know I’ve already been hired for something.” He really would have rather let her get to the point on her own time; but, this was something major and he didn’t like being kept in the dark.
President Tow quirked a smile and looked past the linguist to something he couldn’t see. “Agent Reed. How long until the M.A.L.P. is ready?” She asked, already knowing the answer.
“It’s ready now.” The gruff voice of his escort responded. “What would you like them to do?”
She thought for a moment. “Have them send it now. This shouldn’t take that much longer. And, if you could escort Mr. Marcus here to a lab station downstairs when we are done?”
“Yes Ma’am. Anything else?”
“Yes, hook him into the M.A.L.P. feed along with its recordings. That is all.” She stated as she turned her attention back to the man sitting across from her. “A Little over three months ago, we had a mishap with an experiment here and lost several good researchers. What we found in its place was a large white circle that we called ‘the anomaly’. A few days later some instruments that were monitoring it started picking up strange EM readings.” He was paying close attention, but she knew the next part would be hard for anyone to believe. “It turns out what we were receiving was an alien communication.”
Anthony just stared at her for a minute. This has to be some kind of a joke or something. Either that or the Chinese came up with some sort of new language, like we did with Navajo in World War 2 and they just don’t want that information released. He consoled himself, aliens couldn’t possibly exist. “So, will I be staying here?” Hopefully they’ll put me up in a decent hotel; I’d hate to have to sleep on a cot.
“Unfortunately, you won’t be able to leave for the next three months. You will study what you can of the language for the next two days. We believe that the anomaly is actually a gateway, and if it proves safe, you will be going there to learn the language for the rest of that time. We already sent word to your wife that you will be gone.” President Tow knew that he didn’t believe her; most people wouldn’t. But, he didn’t get a say on the matter, not at this point. Lifting her right hand towards the door she said. “If you will follow Agent Reed here, he will show you to your workstation. Good luck.”
Anthony would have liked to get a few more answers but knew what being dismissed looked like. As he stood up he put his hand across the wooden table to shake the President’s hand, he had too, he might never get a chance like this again. After shaking her hand, he followed Agent Reed back out into the corridor. If I knew I would be fully sequestered here, I would have left a note or something. His wife was an MP at Camp Zama Army base in Japan, he’d always been happy that she’d been placed there at about the same time he’d gotten his first job translating in Tokyo, and they were less than an hour apart by train. Anthony was so distracted by these competing thoughts that he had barely noticed when they returned back to the computer terminals on the first floor.
Anthony saw Agent Reed pointing at the first console and he sat down at it. All he had was a computer screen to watch whatever events were about to happen unfold. On the screen he could see from what had to be a mounted camera pointed at something white, he could make out a robotic arm at the edge of the screen.
“Confirmed. No damage to the M.A.L.P. arm, sending it back through the anomaly now.” The voice came through a set of speakers set up along the bank of consoles; with each computer being manned by a serious looking people in either suits or lab coats. On the screen, the camera moved closer to the white field, and as the arm touched it, the surface of the anomaly rippled and the arm disappeared. “Camera passing through the anomaly now; should have picture any second now.”
Anthony started to question his assumptions now, if this were a trick they would never have gone through this level of detail or expense.
“Receiving signal, cleaning it up.” As the M.A.L.P. operator spoke, the screen showed an empty white room. “Passing mid-way point of ingress.” As this last line was spoken, the camera took a sudden shuddering jolt and the view was suddenly of the floor. “M.A.L.P. should finish passing through in 3…2…1.” The camera took another shuddering jump as it reoriented itself to being level with the floor; all that could be seen was a white room and a wooden door at the far end. “Stopping Forward motion. Panning camera right.” As the camera moved, something slowly came into view, something purple. The object was quadrupedal and had a face. It looked like a colorful small horse with an overly large head and anime eyes.
As the camera centered the purple pony, Anthony heard a mechanical sound come through the speakers, but it was unintelligible as anything other than noise. After a few seconds the sound repeated. The pony sat on its haunches and started making noises of its own. That’s language! The linguist was stunned. Alien life! Is it hot in here? His mind shifted tracks as his vision went blurry and then black.
Anthony woke up propped in a chair. He could see the smirks of the people around him. He grabbed a proffered cup of water, took a sip and straightened back up. “Do you have someplace I can watch the video from the M.A.L.P. and whatever recordings you have?”
The tech in front of him, the one who’d handed him the water, just pointed to the terminal he was at. “Yeah, it’s already been setup. You just can’t talk to them live, not until you get there.”
The workers slowly depart back to their stations, leaving him to his work. Down to work I guess. He put on a pair of headphones; while Anthony did have a guide book from whoever did the original translating job, he wanted to hear what it sounded like without outside opinions. He then selected the video of when the rover had first passed through the anomaly.
What the heck is this? Anthony asked himself. It took the linguist a few minutes to start to differentiate the syllables in this new language and to get a feel for how it flowed. All these sound are in human languages. He thought, surprised that it would still follow human sound structures to such a degree. After parsing the language a little, he pulled out some paper and started writing notes to himself. It doesn’t sound like any language from Earth and yet it sounds familiar, like I’ve heard it before. It contains several glottal stops and each syllable appears to begin with a consonant. The consonants are also very prominent causing the language to sound harsh and guttural. But there was also something else he considered. And yet it sounds lyrical.
Anthony pulled out over the folder sitting on a nearby desk titled Basic Structure and Vocabulary for Extraterrestrial Language. He started going through the book while still listening to the audio files he had access to.
While we have yet to fully understand the word order it appears to be subject verb object. While this cannot be confirmed yet, all audio samples indicate this phenomenon. Their basic greeting appears to sound like nook-NEKH and contains some sort of connotations that have yet to be fully understood. mah ghoS roj is the phrase for I come in peace and should be uttered during first contact. Some other words we have deciphered are gharwI’ (diplomat), ghom (group), qempa’ (deity, god, whether this refers to a specific deity is yet to be understood), nuH (something dangerous, i.e. weapons)
Anthony continued to read the approximately 20 pages of research they currently had on this language. Still unsure why it sounded so familiar and yet alien. The one thing the translator was sure of though was that it wasn’t related to any language he was familiar with.
Avery and Victor were sitting on the red couch waiting to see the director. They had been called in from their vacation in Vegas and were wearing jeans and Hawaiian shirts. Avery was six foot two inches, slightly taller than his counterpart, but it was slight enough to not notice. They tended to work with each other and were on CIA missions. Avery had started working in the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency over a decade before and had trained Victor on a few missions about six years prior. They worked well as a team and were effective at their designated jobs, Victor still wore the scars on his left arm from a mission in Columbia that had gone belly up.
Victor turned to his partner. “Think we’ll get to see the greys they have in storage?” he asked, referring to the belief that the CIA kept remains of aliens from a crash in 1947.
Avery barely shook his head. “You know that story is completely fake. Someone’s been watching too many movies.”
“That’s pretty funny coming from you. Besides, can’t blame a guy for hoping.” Victor tended to use humor to break the tension before a mission. “Any idea why we’re here?” He switched to serious; as of yet, they had been told nothing.
“Same as you, just that we needed to come.” This was unusual; they had never been called in from a vacation and were usually given weeks to prepare for a new mission, unless it was an emergency. So they just sat and waited.
After about ten minutes they heard a woman’s voice coming through the intercom next to the door. “You can come in.” They both stiffened. They both stood up and opened the door. Upon seeing the president they closed the door and stood at attention.
President Tow let them stand for another minute, trying to judge what kind of people they were. “Please, sit down.” She pointed to the two chairs sitting in front of them. Both agents sat rigidly, awaiting whatever grim news they were about to receive. As far as they knew, she was supposed to be at Camp David on a vacation herself.
“You two will be going on a unique mission, but before I give you any information you will get one chance to back out.” She spoke as they barely even flinched. “Ok then.” She handed them each a folder. “In there is the information we have on an anomaly that appeared here due to an experiment a few months ago. We received some sort of language using very sensitive mics; it is believed to be from an alien life form. We currently have a probe on the other side to see if it is safe for human exploration.” Both operatives continue their stoic positions, waiting for whatever their job would be. “You will be there to guard a translator, but you will also have the responsibility of doing an independent threat assessment.” She paused, giving her guests a chance to ask any questions.
Avery asked the obvious question, “Is this translator with the agency?”
The president shook her head, “No. We have used him before but he’s not from the CIA.” She hoped this wouldn’t be a problem; this was a delicate game of chess and she wouldn’t let any of these three embarrass her.
“Why isn’t someone going who has experience in the field? Jarry would do, we’ve worked with him before.” Avery asked. He’d wanted to be more assertive until he remembered who he was talking to.
“That’s the problem.” She responded. “We don’t know what kind of technology or how advanced it is. Jarry is the person that made the initial breakthroughs on their language; we couldn’t afford to lose him if something went wrong.” Neither man flinched at being told they were essentially expendable; they knew what all those stars were for at Langley, and that they would likely become one. “And from what Jarry could decipher, and from what the M.A.L.P. has shown us, it looks like they use magic. We couldn’t risk the kind of sensitive information that he holds to fall into their hands.”
“So they can read minds?” Victor asked, a little disturbed.
“We don’t know, but there are few chances being taken at this stage. You will leave in the morning. Any other questions?” She knew there would be.
“So we aren’t getting all the information that you have then?” Avery asked, trying to plan out his mission.
“No, everything you need to need is in those folders, but nothing that could compromise the security of this facility or country.”
“Good.” Avery hated being kept in the dark, it made it harder to get out alive if the shit hit the fan, but in this instance he agreed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at Camp David?” Victor asked. If he might die, he wanted to know why the President herself decided to brief them.
“Who could resist first contact with aliens; besides, it’s not the first time a Camp David trip has been used as a cover.” President Tow replied, figuring it was no great secret. “If that’s all, you two are dismissed. And take a gun with you, but make it small and keep it hidden.”
Victor and Avery both stood up and left the room. After the door closed Avery told Victor, “Don’t say it.”
“But I didn’t say anything.” Victor pleaded innocently.
Avery smiled, knowing exactly where this was going and trying not to laugh or groan. “Yet. You haven’t said anything yet.”
Victor stayed quiet for a moment as they walked down towards the kitchen to get some food. “I guess we do get to see aliens, Think they look like the ones from Roswell?”