Reverberations

Science doesn't lie, Lucas thought, but it doesn't always know the whole story.

Stationed at the Tucson nighttime observation facility, he had enjoyed the near non-stop memes flashing across his social media. They all conveyed the same message, "Science Doesn't Lie." The memes were funny at first, then grew more tragic. But then it got him thinking strange thoughts. Thoughts the typically quiet young man shared with his fellow researcher Felecia, "Science doesn't lie, but it does change. Doesn't it?"

Felicia paused; what an odd question. Happy to engage, she replied, "So, are you saying that science can't be trusted?"

The conversation became water-cooler fodder quickly and spread throughout the station. Lucas's co-workers had harassed him for days about asking that question.

No, he insisted, he was not questioning Science. No, he did not want their funding grants cut. He was just asking a question. How many paradigms in Science had been challenged and then shifted in the past century? He knew of at least three in the early part of the 20th century. So, what is to say that Science would not shift again?

And like most inconvenient questions, his thinking eventually led him to the radio telescope facility in Canada, known as CHIME. This radio telescope, simply put, listened to the sky. And listening had paid off. Listening nearly always pays off, Lucas thought.

Over the past several years, the scientific community has seen an inexplicable exponential increase in FRBs or Fast Radio Bursts from out in deep space. No one knew what these bursts were or where they came from, except a possibility that originated from Tucson's unpopular, questioning scientist.

As Lucas flew out of Phoenix International into New Vancouver, he experienced his first aerial view of the decade's old devastation on the West Coast of Arizona. "The Earthquake" had finally hit. What had once been prophesied scientifically as "The Big One" became known simply as "The Earthquake."

Western Arizona had turned into a prime coastline along with parts of Nevada. An area that had once been the Eastern parts of Oregon and Washington. The entire state of California had split apart, the Western half sliding into the inappropriately named Pacific Ocean. The Eastern half sank into a massive chasm, only to be filled in by the hungry Pacific.

That had happened ten years ago, about the same time the FRBs started to pick up in frequency and intensity. Flights had been restricted for five years due to the sheer volume of dust, dirt, ash, and junk the breaking of California had thrown into the air. Commercial flights had resumed slowly and were nearing pre-quake levels when a new spate of disasters had struck the Earth.

Recently, the traumatic events which had hit the West Coast of the United States had migrated and intensified globally. As if some giant virus had struck and been spreading sporadically across the planet.

Japan was sinking, a foot a day in some areas. The Chinese mainland had experienced the birth of several new mega volcanoes erupting from fertile soil. The breadbasket of Europe was experiencing daily tremors of varying magnitudes along with an extensive drought. Of utmost alarm, most of Africa had gone silent over the past few weeks. Most deduced the silence due to atmospheric issues blocking satellite transmissions. Other parts of Africa seemed to have disappeared entirely.

All of the oceans were a hot tempestuous mess, including the Antarctic. The world's oceans were layered in decay. Trash and the dead formerly lying at the seabed had been churned up and floated now in a layer. Putrefying sea creatures rotted on beaches. Trans-ocean cables were torn asunder, tying up the little shipping still at sea.

The world was going dark, it seemed to Lucas. Science had given many answers to the phenomena or, as some scientists insisted, phenomenon. They could not agree if all of the devastations were one event or several events happening simultaneously. Regardless, they all believe it was naturally occurring. None of their answers satisfied him.

It was here where he challenged the conventional thinking of his colleagues. He believed all of the events were one essential phenomenon. Many agreed with him here. However, he thought the disasters were a phenomenon external to the Earth.

His first proof came from the final image Hubble was able to capture. The famous space telescope had gone offline several years before. With all of the debris floating around in the atmosphere, space flights were discontinued. Communications with the space station and Hubble had ended.

A few months prior, a static image had been retrieved from the Hubble by an intrepid intern who had used a backchannel radio connection to grab and then download the image. The link had dropped several times, and it had taken nearly two weeks to download, but a print had come through of a distant starfield with a blue speck in the bottom corner. That field, as configured, was utterly unknown, as was the dot.

Weeks went by before the same intern made a mental connection and postulated a theory. The blue speck was a known celestial object. It was only positioned in a completely different part of space, as were three other celestial objects the intern had tentatively identified. All four were from separate parts of the mapped universe, now converging in one image.

The community hotly debated this image, the intern's theory, competing theories, and what it all meant. Quickly emerging from this debate, a conventional view formed that went along these lines. The telescope, through a software issue, had converged three or four images into one uber embodiment. Thereby mixing up different parts of space into one area.

Lucas disagreed. He believed the image was true, the objects had all moved, and the phenomenon was not relegated to Earth but to all of the known universe. "The phenomenon was universal" was the statement that had nearly gotten him fired and, ironically, had led to his solidifying an invitation to CHIME. He believed the signals, the FRBs, if deciphered correctly, might explain if not provide a solution to the overall cause. For he believed the disasters and the celestial movement were linked.

Arriving in his new lab, Lucas took all the FRB recordings, the public ones, and the ones that had been held back by his new colleagues. They had held some back for no other reason than they were poor examples and not as "sexy" as the longer and more clear recordings. Having taken the samples, he had categorized them using his own table. He then had written a cloud query through a Cloud AI's automatic speech recognition program.

He had brought the AI on a 64TB drive in case the fiber cable had been cut to the CHIME facility. Fortunately, he had not had to use his drive, at least not up to this point. The way his new colleagues spoke, they expected fiber to be cut any day.

"Speech recognition?" his new boss had asked. "Do you think the FRBs are communications from someone or something out there?"

"No, I don't. Not from our physical universe anyway." Lucas had said without further explanation. "Give me a few more days with the AI and then a good FRB sample for this query to run. I need to teach the AI a few more things, then we'll see what we get."

"I understand," she said, pausing a moment. She fought against asking more questions. Her curiosity and fear of what was happening to their world prompted her to request more information. Instead, she said, "Things are getting worse out there. If you are going to come up with something, do it soon."

"Will do," Lucas said. He was tempted to share his theory but not until he had hard proof. And hopefully, in days, the evidence would be there, in a translation.

A usable FRB did not take days to appear. It was broadcast that night.

Lucas finished his AI training program, then waited. As the learning query ended, the AI screen prompt, stating, "Ready to Translate."

His heart beating hard in his chest, Lucas called the FRB technician, "Do we have any new bursts? Anything solid, say between five- and ten-time specks?"

"Yeah, actually, I recorded this earlier this evening," here Lucas heard a click as the tech shared an audio file. "Hey, did you hear?"

"Hear what?" Lucas asked as he grabbed the file off their shared drive. Running the audio file through a filter, he cleaned up any extraneous noise as he listened to the tech.

"Africa. It's back online! Can you believe it? One moment it wasn't there like a black hole had sucked it up. The next moment, it was back online as if it had never left."

Lucas grunted, "Interesting. Thanks for sending me the file."

"Yeah, sure, let me know if you figure this thing out."

Taking the clean file, he dropped it into the query. Holding his finger over the execute button, he breathed deeply, then prayed silently, "please let this work."

The translation of the audio file was nearly instantaneous, and it made no sense to him. Pondering what it could mean, he read aloud:

"I..gor...{unkown}, where… {unkown} did you get…. this brain?"

(Author's note: I write short stories for my family every Christmas season. I have done so for over ten years. This particular quirky story was for my son. He enjoys odd, overly complicated, and weird stories. He enjoyed this one immensely. If the reader enjoys it as well, please consider a generous Tip below.

As always, thank you for reading!)