Earth-ball, Corner Pocket

January 11, 2049

Tokyo: Dr. Yumi Shima, JAXA

Adelaide: Dr. Colin Nesbitt, ASA

Bangalore: Dr. Jiera Chakrabarti, ISRO

All three come to their offices to find an unmarked, brown-paper wrapped package on their desks.

January 21, 2049

Moscow: Dr. Natalya Petrekova, Roscosmos

Cairo: Dr. Darwish Gamal, ESA

Pretoria: Dr Manqoba Musa, SANSA

All three are surprised by the arrival of a brown-paper-wrapped package at their office.

January 31, 2049

Mexico City: Dr. Carlos Santiago, AEM

Buenos Aires: Dr. Isabella Rosales, CONAE

Both come home from church to find a brown-paper-wrapped package on their doorsteps.

Upon opening their packages, each finds a similar interior box of dark metal with a simple latch. Inside is a weird and heavy, corner-shaped black metal fitting set atop black velvet, appearing as if it would attach to a corner of a desk or table or similar. All sides are perfectly smooth; no writing, no lights, no change in material, nothing at all to indicate the purpose or source of the object. A glance at the interior of the now-uplifted lid shows a weird, numbered diagram etched upon it. It is only after the two close friends, Drs. Santiago and Rosales, confide their situation with each other that they discover they were not alone and that they have identical devices and images on the inside of their boxes. They contact UN Security to alert all collaborative space science projects to the situation, and each of the recipients becomes aware of the others’ mutual gifts. The UN decides to send everyone to Canada – a neutral, goodwill nation – so everyone can meet and investigate securely. They all meet in a conference room provided by the CSA.

February 4, 2049

Isabella, wearing a white lab coat today, stood up and plucked the device from its container in front of her. “I believe we all received similar boxes, no?” She held it aloft for all to compare. Nods went around the room as some reached in and pulled out their own devices and inspected it, turning it over various ways to ensure that it was similar to the one she held. “Good. I am assuming we have these because whoever sent them expects us to do something with each of them.” More nods.

She continued. “And we all have this weird inscription on the interior lid? I have three circles, one large, one medium, and one small? A little arrow pointing from the medium one to the large one with ‘.05%’ next to it? Also, ‘±90, ±90, 0’ and ‘±90, 0, ±90’ underneath it all? Also, this number 530 in the large circle.”

Up until that point, everyone had nodded agreements that they held identical items, but at that last statement, only Carlos said, “Sí.” Everyone else shook their head in denial.

Colin spoke first, “I have 550 instead of 530.” He received supporting agreement from Drs. Shima and Chakrabarti. Drs. Santiago and Rosales came over to inspect their box lids.

“Sorry, but I also have another difference with 540.” Natalya interjected and pointed at her box lid. “I do, too,” came from both Drs. Musa and Gamal.

“How very strange, these slight but still coordinated differences. Let us tell our stories, and perhaps we can gain information that way.” They proceeded to share their morning routines of the days on which they received their boxes. It wasn’t until Yumi began her story with the date that this clue was uncovered.

“Yes, Monday, January 11th, I open my office –,” she began.

“Wait, Yumi,” Isabella interrupted her. “January 11th? I received my device on January 31st, along with Carlos.” He nodded in support of her claim. “I have a 530, and did you not have 550 on yours? Who else received theirs on January 11th?" She pointedly looked at the two others who said 550 earlier.

“I suppose it could have been the 11th. That was a Monday? Yes, it was on a Monday, so that could have been it.” Colin speculated. “And I do have the 550, like Yumi.”

“I have the other 550, and I believe the 11th is accurate, now that I think about it.” Jiera confirmed.

“550 and 530 are a difference of 20, and the 11th and 31st are 20 days apart. So, those of you with the 540, did you receive yours on the 21st?” Isabella continued to press the point. Everyone had that ‘aha’ moment simultaneously with her in response.

“Why yes, Isabella, it was the 21st for me because I received this package the day before my birthday, the 22nd. I can confirm mine is, for sure,” Natalya responded.

Manqoba agreed. “Yes, the 21st is accurate for me, as well, because that was Wednesday of last week. That is the same day I have a weekly appointment with the agency director, and I immediately took it with me to that meeting later that day.”

Darwish was the last to speak of all of them. “It can have been the 21st; I can’t remember exactly, but it fits.”

“So, we expect these are then supposed to do with something to happen in 550, then 540, then 530 days from the dates of receipt. Who knows what day is that?” Isabella asked.

Yumi quickly tapped it out on her smartphone. “Friday, July 15, 2050.”

“Let us put these all side-by-side, and see if we can see any more differences.” Isabella grabbed the box from Carlos on her left and from Darwish on her right and brought them closer together. Yumi brought hers from the other side of the table while Drs. Petrekova and Musa got two of the other boxes each to complete the set. Everyone gathered and inspected the lids.

Isabella spoke. “Are we agreed they all appear identical other than the single number in the large circle? And are we agreed the number appears to be a date countdown?” All heads and voices confirmed affirmative aggreement.

“Great. Next step is either the pictogram or the numerics. Let us divide and conquer? Half on each? If you get brain fatigue, switch groups? Fresh eyes or something?” Again, everyone agreed this was sensible. “Excellent. Let us do that.”

The next few days discussing the diagram were seemingly headed for a dead end, when Darwish grabbed two of the metal devices and laid them on a table. He set a few more and stacked them to make a cube-like shape. From across the room, Yumi’s eyes flew wide open. She spoke much more loudly than usual, “Cubic coordinates!” They’re all the coordinates! In a way...” She stood up and walked over to Darwish.

Everyone stopped to listen to her. “Hold on. It’s a system different than our own, but it still somewhat works. If you assign all three dimensions of space to lines of latitude on the globe instead of our system of latitude, longitude, altitude…” She lifted two of the devices in the air to hover over the ones on the table, had Darwish hold those for her while she took the other two so that four of them hovered over four others on the table, making a perfect cube.

Manqoba completed her thought. “You get positive and negative 90 degrees on each spatial axis, with 90 being the maximum pole for the globe on that axis.”

Jiera said, “Ah yes, the quantity of the plus/minus permutations in the inscribed listings would give us 8 options.”

Colin added, “8 coordinates, 8 devices, it fits.”

Natalya offered, “So like 90 degrees north/south, 90 degrees east/west, and what, 90 degrees … front/back? What would we even call that? Interesting.”

Darwish opened his eyes wide, as well, “So you are suggesting we are supposed to encase the earth in a cube, with these devices at the corners?”

Gasps went around the room at the thought. Colin whistled. “Wow.”

“So we know most of the intention, but the three circles? And the arrow? And the ‘.05%’?” Carlos asked. Everyone peered at the diagram.

Manqoba gave a conjecture. “You think this is supposed to be around the globe. Well, if these are three different-sized circles, I would say the large is the sun, the middle is the earth, and the small is the moon. The arrow from the earth points to the sun. I would say .05% is a reference to the distance between, and the point in space at which these devices need to be positioned. So we basically need to make a cube surround earth at a distance of… around 75,000 kilometers?”

“That’s… large scale for sure… Why would we want to encapsulate the planet? Not to mention most, if not all, its satellites.”

Darwish had been fidgeting with his box while everyone was speaking, and he just now turned it upside down. On the bottom of the box was etched a known two-dimensional representation of a hypercube, a fourth-dimensional object. “Did anyone else see this? I had not until just now. Do we all have one?” Everyone turned over a box to reveal the same hypercube depiction underneath.

Everyone looked at each other in silence a moment, absorbing this. “So, somehow, this will put the earth into a hypercube? That is what this image is suggesting.” Carlos asked.

“I am friends with a woman at home who is convinced earth is not the only home to intelligent species in the universe.” Jiera said. “She would say this is hinting at an advanced race giving us a test of some sort. We may gain knowledge or technology or similar if we succeed.”

“Or we open a gate to invading terrorists with superior technology to destroy us all!” Darwish countered.

Isabella didn’t waste time to take control before it was too late. “Oh, dear, let’s not let emotions override our investigation. I am sure if they could destroy us, they would have done so already instead of setting up this little puzzle. We will establish our theory and present it to the world leaders. They are the ones with whom that decision rests. If we are going to launch these to be ready by July 15th of next year, we have no time to waste.”

The scientists took one additional afternoon to polish their theories regarding the diagram, numbers, and devices, to come up with an expected plan from those theories, and to write their formal findings letters to their governments.

Within a year, plans for each nation to piggyback a drone with a satellite launch with specific spatial destinations for the devices were made, and the deadline date was done. The special propulsion drones remained in very far orbit between forty-eight and ninety-six hours, depending on country, making final destination corrections during the last day. Not knowing during which time zone the deadline date applied, everyone assumed it could be any of them, and they planned accordingly.

The day came and almost went uneventfully, and the scientists and their respective governments were disappointed. Until, unexpectedly, headlines from labs around the globe started pouring in.

• “Atomic clocks reporting 78 seconds fast to all other clocks.”
• “Massive neutrino spikes exuding from every body in the solar system, even the sun.”
• “Astronomers detect gamma wave burst receding from our solar system in all directions.”

All the scientists joined an emergency conference call. Dr. Rosales spoke to all of them. “I believe we were just rescued by an advanced civilization. They knew something was going to go wrong, and they gave us the means to save ourselves. They must have saved the rest of the solar system with some kind of neutrino curtain that accessed the fourth dimension. For 78 seconds, the entire solar system wasn’t here when the source of the gamma rays detonated. There may be some truth to the notion that aliens visited our primitive ancestor cultures. Let us be reminded why it is important we continue to do our jobs every day. Someday, maybe we can achieve the same on our own.”