Schemes of the Unknown Unknown Ch. 01

"So, remind me," requested the Interplanetary Union's Minister for External Affairs. "How have we managed to commit ourselves to the horrendous expense of this mission?"

"Do you mean the Alpha Project, sir?" asked Permanent Secretary Alfredo Miskiewicz from his office at Mare Cognitum on the Moon.

"Whatever it's called now..." said the Minister with a hint of brusque annoyance in his voice. "Just what is it about this mission that is so important that it justifies an expense equivalent to the gross national product of an entire space colony? Surely such expenditure could be better allocated to rather more pressing domestic concerns than a fool's errand to travel beyond the edge of the Solar System."

"The governments of many member states believe that this mission warrants the very highest priority, sir," said the Permanent Secretary. "They believe that the Anomaly might well be an alien presence of some kind and have persuaded the General Assembly to abide by the opinion that it would be more prudent to launch the mission than not to do so."

There were a few seconds between the time when the Minister uttered his words and the Permanent Secretary having received them that was an inevitable consequence of the physical distance between the Moon and the traditional headquarters of the Interplanetary Union on Earth, further exacerbated by the complex algorithms by which his words were encryption that was standard for all but the most mundane communication. In that time the Permanent Secretary had the leisure to evaluate the image of the elected representative while he waited for his words to arrive. His scepticism of any kind of fancy was evidence of the practical bias of his technocratic culture. That the Minister came from Triton was also evident from his overbearing height and the traditional satin and silk uniform he chose to wear. Although he was well over a hundred years old, he looked no older than any other representative of the Interplanetary Union, apart from the eccentric few who refused to artificially prolong their youth.

"What is theinformedopinion of what this Anomaly might be?" the Minister asked. "What do respected scientists who are expert in this field believe it to be?"

"There's no agreement, sir. The nearest to a consensus opinion is the hypothesis that it might be a Dark Energy perturbation, despite the fact that it doesn't conform at all to the standard model. This is also the Interplanetary Union's officially stated view regarding the phenomenon."

"There must have been robotic probes sent to the Anomaly. I can't believe that something like this can have been known about for over two centuries and that no one has thought about examining it up close with something rather less expensive than a colossal space ship and a multinational army."

"Nearly a hundred probes have been sent there, principally by the Socialist Republics of Saturn but also by the various Martian nations and some from Earth orbit. The probes have most often failed to identify or transmit a coherent image, which fact has in turn generated some of the wilder conspiracy theories associated with this phenomenon. Those images that have been successfully received are at best inconclusive. They show very little more than can be seen through telescopes from the ecliptic plane."

"And whatdothey show?"

"As you know, sir, what they appear to show is a constantly shifting image that most nearly resembles a rip in space. There is no evidence at all of any energy being emitted from the Anomaly. The bizarre Apparitions that have been getting so much news coverage in the rest of the Solar System are significantly more densely packed around the Anomaly than they are anywhere else."

"You mean these fabled Apparitions like floating butterflies, anthropomorphic gargoyles and flying vegetables," remarked the sceptical Minister. "And these Apparitions are most often to be observed in the neighbourhood of the Anomaly?"

"It seems so, sir."

"These aliens must have a very odd sense of humour," the Minister said with a smirk. "What do our best scientists believe these Apparitions to be?"

"The best hypothesis currently is that they are a concentration of media images that have somehow consolidated in space and are now being bounced back at us, sir," said the Permanent Secretary. "It is believed that Dark Energy is acting as a kind of mirror to electromagnetic radiation and is reflecting back at us a random selection of our own emissions."

"Isn't it also claimed that these Apparitions have mass?"

"That could just be a result of interaction with Dark Energy, sir," said the Permanent Secretary. "There are some peculiar effects associated with the more exotic cosmological phenomena. Dark Matter is only one manifestation of it. This could very well be yet another."

"Well, I'm glad that not everyone has gone insane," said Minister Dhafer Kunde as he squeezed his flat nose between two huge black forefingers. "But do we really need to send an army, a multinational army at that, to observe a bunch of consolidated virtual images?"

"It is thought, sir, that if the space shipdoesmeet an alien intelligence of some kind it would be advisable to be well prepared."

"Perhaps we should also send film producers and advertising executives?" sniffed the Minister. "This really is priceless! Do the Martians and the crazier Jovian coloniesreallybelieve that aliens would broadcast their presence by beaming images of flying horses, blue-finned fishes and funny yellow blobs? In any case, I'd have thought that our probes might have identified rather more concrete evidence of alien intelligence than a bizarre ten thousand kilometre rip in spacetime."

"There is also evidence that the Anomaly is growing ever larger at an alarming rate," remarked the Permanent Secretary. "When it was spotted in the early 36th century, it was less than two or three hundred kilometres in length."

"But wasn't it just as large, if not larger, when it was first seen in the 21st century?" remarked the Minister. "And that just fizzled out two centuries later. Who's to say the same thing won't happen again?"

"I must abide by the decisions of the General Assembly of the Interplanetary Union, Your Excellency," the Permanent Secretary reminded the Minister. "It has been agreed that the Anomaly is a matter of the utmost concern and should be addressed accordingly."

"I understand," said the Minister hurriedly. "But as you know, this fanciful nonsense about aliens really should not be a matter of debate for a body of such high authority as the General Assembly."

"Shall we discuss more practical matters, sir?" the Permanent Secretary reminded the Minister.

"Indeed," said the Minister, who was far more at home with such discussion. "Has a space ship been commissioned for this enterprise?"

"The only one available at short notice is the Interplanetary Space Ship Intrepid. It's just been refitted and its space defences enhanced. It hasn't yet been returned into commercial or military service, so it is the ideal choice."

"The Intrepid? Is it still functioning satisfactorily?"

"It was built to last, sir. And it has done an excellent job at doing just that."

"Well, okay. I guess the Intrepid will have to do. The crew and militia are being recruited?"

"At this very moment, sir. The best in the Solar System."

"And the scientists who will accompany the mission and who will presumably do the most productive work?"

"Obviously, unlike military personnel, scientists cannot be conscripted for the mission, sir. Invitations will be sent out to those it is believed can be spared from more pressing duties and who are expert in the required disciplines."

"And which disciplines are they?"

"Cosmology, linguistics, astrophysics, exobiology, mathematics..."

"And archaeology, I see," said the Minister glancing at a holographic display in his velvet-lined office beneath the water line in Pacific City. "Why have we commissioned the services of a computer archaeologist from the Kuiper Belt? And from the eccentric colony of Godwin, I notice. What pressing need is there to have him along for the ride?"

"None that I can envisage, sir. But his presence is required for political rather than practical reasons. In a sense, it was he who precipitated this crisis by making publicly available the information that this Anomaly not only existed before its more recent discovery but did so in the very early days of space exploration..."

"...and vanished not long after."

"Indeed, sir. But his findings, using long declassified data, confirmed for many that the Anomaly wasn't just a modern phenomenon and was therefore not manmade. And I believe that many people reasoned that if the Anomaly is an artificial phenomenon and if it hasn't been made by humans if, then it must therefore be the product of an alien intelligence."

"There are a fewnon sequitersin that argument, you must agree."

"Of course, sir. But there have been several assassination attempts on Paul Morris' life and not all of them were successfully pre-empted by our agents," said the Permanent Secretary. "There is evidently a bounty on his head. There are many, therefore, who believe that this Godwinian anarchist must in some way have a critical role in all this. They seem to believe that his discoveries are somehow key to understanding the Anomaly."

"Is there any basis to such a belief?"

"None, sir. He has discovered nothing that wasn't already known to those who had full classified access. His significance is merely that he was able to piece together a coherent picture from data that was thought too archaic to have any contemporary value."

"That information should never have been declassified," the Minister sniffed.

"That was a decision made many years before the Interplanetary Union even existed, sir."

"More's the pity! I guess we have no choice then. This anarchist archaeologist will have to join our hapless crew. Okay. Shall we discuss some of the other matters of significance on this mission? For instance, has anyone yet considered what happens on the return journey from beyond the outer reaches of the Solar System? What measures should be taken if knowledge of this mission somehow gets leaked into the public domain? And just how are we supposed to be able to hide the expense of this secret mission from the auditors?"

Permanent Secretary Alfredo Miskiewicz continued his discussion with the Minister for another hour or so in which such practical matters were clarified. Further meetings were arranged to ensure that not only were the logistics of the mission smoothed out but that the political concerns of all interested parties were resolved. When the Minister was finally satisfied the meeting came to a halt, his image faded away and Alfredo was left alone in his office.

However, his duties were not over. He knew exactly where the many cameras were positioned: not just the official ones but also those unofficially installed by the intelligence agencies of the Solar System's disparate governments. He needed to be discreet as any obviously secretive action would immediately attract attention. He stood by the office window which opened out onto an open plaza beyond which trees grew to several times their natural height in the low lunar gravity.

A segment of skin peeled off his wrist to reveal sophisticated circuitry that was far beyond the technological skills of any human manufacture within the Solar System. He positioned his hands in such a way that all the cameras could see was a nervous twitch that was consistent with a senior civil servant pondering over his duties. He then secretly padded out a message that would be sent by heavily encrypted code on a wavelength not much different from the cosmological background radiation and transmitted far out into deep space.

Alfredo had done his research and knew exactly by which route Paul Morris would need to travel from Godwin to his destination in the Inner Solar System. As all the other pieces were now in place, it only remained to him to activate the necessary instructions to the special agent based on the Ecstasy space colony. Until that moment, there had been many possible candidate routes and there were many other possible agents who might need to be activated. Now, the range of possibilities had collapsed to only one and it was necessary to initiate operations as soon as possible.

His message was sent to the agent he only knew as BTR679-02 and who, after many years of dormancy, was now to be assigned to the mission for which she had been constructed.