The Vostok Revelation

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

November 2239. 0330. Washington Township. Executive Parker’s Private Residence.

Dennis Parker awoke to the ring of his telephone, an analog relic that worked just fine in their proprietary network and couldn’t be traced. Before the sleep could clear from his mind the irritatingly jubilant voice of Jerry Warncke assaulted his senses.

“Dennis, I did it! I fucking did it!”

Dennis squinted across the room. It took a second for his eyes to focus on the battery reliant clock on the wall. “Jesus! Jerry its past three in the morning. What’s so damn important that it couldn’t wait until our meeting?”

“Kathy and I were…”

“Son, a gentleman never talks about such things,” Dennis said fatherly.

A few awkward seconds ticked by, it gave Dennis a degree of satisfaction to know that Jerry was momentarily dumbstruck.

“No, no… it’s not, it’s not like that, not at all, not at all,” Dennis couldn’t help but grin at the speed and seriousness of the young man’s excited voice.

“We were going over all the information collected about the “aliens”, trying to figure out the purpose and timing behind their making themselves known. I mean, if they’ve been on Earth since before recorded time, why show themselves right now? Kathy, with her empirical mind, shot down everything I had to say and couldn’t come up with anything herself. So, she got tired and went home but I couldn’t sleep so I decided to pull up a movie. That’s when it hit me. It makes perfect sense. It’s the only thing that makes perfect sense. I have no doubt Kathy will shoot this down too but I’m certain that this is what they are doing.”

“Jerry, its three-thirty-eight, just spit it out.”

“Phone home, phone home, E.T. phone home,” Jerry said in a falsetto voice that made Dennis’ anger flare-up as he pulled the receiver from his ear. “They must have broken down near Earth or crash landed. Because there was no technology on this planet tens of millions of years ago, they were forced into suspended animation until their robots determined that the planet had progressed enough to provide them what they needed to make their repairs. They hijacked a satellite and broadcast their SOS into space to call home.”

“How does what you said explain the “thing” roaming around the planet and that structure coming up from the ground in Africa?”

“The craft must have lost parts when they crash landed. If they were coming apart as they fell from orbit the parts, the debris, could be spread out across the whole world. Millions of years of weather, natural disasters and continental drift easily explains why everything was deeply buried.

“Maybe that “entity” is an automated mechanic. Maybe it sent those anti-gravity balls to find and collect the missing parts. Maybe when all that stuff met-up in Africa it activated the ship and caused it to dig itself out of the ground.”

Dennis, now more intrigued than annoyed, couldn’t help but smile, this is why he tolerated Jerry’s immature behavior; the boy’s hyper mind was as unconventional as it was brilliant. Even so… “But if they had these maintenance and retrieval robots why wait hundreds of years to dispatch them? They sent their signal more than 225 years ago, why wait 225 years to send out their team?”

The line was silent.

“Jerry, I think you have part of this puzzle. Bring this up at the morning meeting and we’ll all brain storm it. Get yourself some sleep. I think tomorrow is going to be a long day. And Jerry… nice work son.”

November 2239. 0845 Hours. Washington Township, Executive Office. Daily Staff Meeting.

“…and thats where we left it at 4am. Why wait 225 years to send out the team to repair your damaged ship?” Jerry Warncke, sporting large dark bags beneath artificially energized brown eyes, said to the assembled Cabinet of the American Republic before returning to his seat at the u-shaped conference table.

A few seconds passed before Kathy Westbrook, Chief of Science, stood to speak. “Easy. Two hundred and twenty five years is the time it took for the signal to reach its destination and for whoever or whatever is at that destination to send a message back. If Jerry’s theory is true, and I’m not saying it is, then what we’ve been witnessing has been the execution of instructions sent from wherever these things come from.”

Chuck O’Brian, Head of Intelligence, quickly stood. “Yes, and too much of what those things have been up to has been completely out of our sight. The Federation has been standing on the sidelines with their thumbs up their asses while these things have moved all around the globe leaving destruction in their wake. It has been months since they showed themselves and no one is any closer to understanding who they are or what their intentions are. We nee—”

“We need to keep level heads. We need to not let paranoia and fear guide our actions,” Kathy shot back, annoyed at having been talked over. “No one has been standing around with their thumbs up their asses. The Fed has been actively seeking and attempting to communicate with these things from the moment they appeared. The fact that these things are nearly impossible to track isn’t something that anyone can hold against the Fed, it’s just the technology being used in a way we are not accustomed to.

“I think Jerry’s idea that they are attempting to communicate with their homeworld or at least more of their kind off planet is reasonable.

“I’ve been going over the latest information gathered from Utopia. The obelisk experiences thousands of micro-power spikes per second. These spikes appear to be patterned with slight pauses between segments.”

“Communication? Some form of alien Morse code?” Jerry leaned forward in his seat.

“It doesn’t appear so,” Kathy took a sip of her water before continuing. “The Fed has used a variety of methods to detect any signal coming to or originating from the obelisk. So far, aside from the micro-power spikes, the obelisk appears to be completely inert.”

“That thing is not inert,” Chuck chimed in from his seat. “Whatever the purpose, my gut is telling me that that obelisk is dangerous.”

Before Kathy could object, Executive Parker, who had been quietly observing, rose form his seat.

“I think no one here is entirely right and no one here is entirely wrong. These things, whether they crashed here or came here, have been here an awfully long time. Nothing we’ve seen from them has shown them to be hostile. But then nothing from them has showed them to be friendly either. The ‘entity’, the man-shaped shadow, hasn’t attempted to communicate as it went about its business, and its business has been quite destructive.

“Jerry, I think your idea that its trying to communicate is valid. Work with Kathy to figure out how these patterned micro-power spikes could be used to communicate.

“Chuck, supply Kathy and Jerry with anything they need to figure this out. I have a feeling one of your crypto guys is going to come in handy.

“People, my gut is telling me that there is a hell of a lot more to that obelisk than what we’re seeing. We need to figure what the mystery is before the shit hits the fan.”

December 2239, Enki’s Calendar Mozambique, Africa