Silence Deep as Death
Lost on the Last Continent is on hiatus for the month of October. Episodes resume November 7th. In the meanwhile, tales from the Unconquered Earth Sequence, my earliest foray into science fiction, will be posted in this space.
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Silence Deep as Death
by
John C Wright
As they drifted on their path
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time
— Thos. Campbell (1774–1844)
Walter Szczepek Kolanin was a silent, patient man. It was ten years since he had returned to Earth, but his eyes still held that, quiet, fixed, and distant look which the solitary crewmen of orbital astronomical stations were wont to have, and his face was still the face of one who had seen the grandeur of the naked stars. Yet even his patience had an end. Beneath his quiet features, he calmly contemplated the dreadful deeds.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” he spoke from the podium, and his voice echoed from the rear of the auditorium. “I have come to discuss the destruction of the Earth.”
Walter S. Kolanin was dressed in a conservative blue frockcoat, with only the single white sash of a Doctor of Philosophy running from his shoulder to his hip. He wore none of the ornaments and emblems to which his accomplishments entitled him. He was not a demonstrative man; everyone on Earth knew who he was.
“I will briefly repeat the transmission for those of you who are not familiar with it.” The audience stirred restlessly. Everyone on Earth was familiar with the transmission, and with every version and translation of it. “The transmission was received by the SETI project main dish of the National Geographic Orbital Radiotelescope at 2400 hours, October 8th, Greenwich Mean Time; almost ten years ago to the day.
“The transmission consisted of radio pulses on the cold hydrogen wavelength, which is the wavelength few stars radiate, and which is consequently is the frequency with the least interstellar background noise. The message was spelled out in Morse code words in English, then Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and French. The grammatical errors were the same that any schoolchild would make, that is to say, errors showing that the speakers carried out our grammar logically. They spell ‘goed’ for example, rather than ‘went’; ‘taked’, not ‘taken’. We can only speculate about the extraterrestrial psychology which apparently has learned enough about us to speak five of our languages, but which refuses to learn proper grammar.
“For our purposes here, I have corrected the grammar, and edited certain sentences which are repetitious, or show a clumsy construction.
“This is the first message ever to have been received by any human being from any extraterrestrial intelligence. It answers the question, long puzzling to us, as to why, if there are as many inhabited worlds as our theories predict, we have never heard radio messages from them heretofore.”
Walter S. Kolanin, it was true, was not a good public speaker. The audience was bored. Even those young men who carried placards reading, SILENCE NOW! and SHUT IT ALL DOWN! were whispering jokes among themselves, waiting for the next speaker. One young girl with a sign TV OR NOT TV, had fallen asleep.
“I will omit reading the long section of definitions, which, in the alien message, proceed the main text.” One young lout, nodding beneath a placard reading SILENCE IS GOLDEN, muttered “Good. Get on with it, old man.”
Walter S. Kolanin said, “The text reads as follows: Matter and energy which is organized into self-aware self-replicating structures are directed by logic to embrace those moral laws and doctrines encouraging co-operation. Hence, it is necessary to impart information to benefit our respective civilizations mutually. No message have previously been sent in order that radio silence be maintained.
The continuous broadcasts you issue endanger both your neighboring civilizations and your own. A powerful and ancient civilization of Destroyers has enslaved or annihilated three other civilizations.
The remaining six civilizations within ten thousand light-years of your world choose to maintain radio silence in order to elude the attention of the Destroyer civilization. The carrying machines and motile worlds of the Destroyers also maintain radio silence in order to approach the civilizations they hope to conquer without prior warning. We suggest you adopt radio silence. Cease all transmissions and radiations on the following frequencies… the message goes on to describe those bandwidths used for our commercial and military radio and television, navigational beacons, and citizen’s broadcast bands, including certain radio noise made by a small class of atomic engines. The message concludes by saying that they shall not attempt to contact us again, in case the Destroyers should detect the broadcast.
“I have been asked to speak to this meeting of the Society for the Salvation of Earth in order to gain your support in convincing political and business leaders of the seriousness of the Kolanin transmission. So far, no steps whatsoever have been taken to shut down all sources of radio emission our planet gives off…”
A heckler from the audience shouted, “Read the end of it!” This was a young man in a yellow cloak, with his corporate and student union emblems glittering among the slogans and displays of his coat.
The apathy of the audience was disturbed by the young man’s call. There were shouts and hoots, demands to be quiet.
Walter S. Kolanin said, “The message ends by saying that the nearest flotillas of the Destroyer Civilization fleet of World- Ships are within two hundred light-years of Sol. If the Destroyers continue at their present rate of expansion, they will detect our broadcasts within two hundred to five hundred years. If they drive for the planet at the near light-speed velocities which the Kolanin aliens say the Destroyers are capable, they should arrive here within the five hundred year time-frame.”
There was some scattered laughter from the audience. One or two people were getting up to leave. Someone muttered. “Five centuries from now! Let me check my calendar to see what I’m doing that day.” This comment was greeted by calls of, “Shut Up!” and “Your TV is killing our grandchildren!”
“Our political leaders share your procrastinating sentiment, and have taken no steps to change all radio and television broadcasts over to cable or direct line systems. The danger, however, is real, no matter how remote it seems to us…”
The heckler in the yellow cloak stood up. “What was the end of the message, Dr. Kolanin?! What was the end?!”
“The young man is no doubt referring to the technical diagrams and information the Kolanin aliens transmitted as an appendix to the main message. It describes a number of machines and inventions which the Kolanin aliens shared with us for the express purpose of removing all doubt about the sincerity of the message. These are the so-called ‘twenty miracle machines’ you’ve all read about. Claims in the early days that the whole message was a hoax, were silenced by the production of these inventions. No one believes that I invented responder cells, or the self-organizing microcircuit, or the ylem matrix all by myself. I wish I had claimed credit for the inventions. The infinite-series energy cell is now part of almost all our networks, our household appliances, our military vehicles and weapons. The royalties from that alone would have made me a wealthy man…”
And he thought: wealthy enough to not have to beg money from lunatic fringe organizations like this one.
The yellow heckler was not finished: “What about the missing 7000 lines?”
Walter S. Kolanin said in a tone of perfect calm: “There were no missing lines. The entire alien transmission was rebroadcast to both commercially and to government authorities.”
“Then why does the computer log for the orbital telescope show 7000 deleted lines? What about the McGarvey document?”
“Mr. McGarvey knows very well that older systems sometimes suffer malfunctions in their tracking programs. There were no deleted lines.”
“And the missing three minutes on the tapes?” shouted the heckler, “Long enough for you to doctor the computer log, and delete 7000 lines of the Kolanin message!”
At that moment, the moderator chose to step forward. “I’m sorry, but that’s all the time we have for Q &A for this applicant…” The small group holding SILENCE NOW and SHUT UP OR DIE signs booed and hooted. Walter Kolanin carefully counted the number of people in the small audience whom he took to be supporters of his cause. The audience was tiny; most of the seat were empty.
He counted the supporters of his project to shut down the radio broadcasts of earth. By his count, the Vegetable-rights signs outnumbered his supporters by 3 to 1. The most numerous group were the sign-bearers advocating a return to paper money currency banking.
He returned to the back room behind the stage, a narrow, dusty room, with stapled polyboards forming one flimsy wall. On the other wall hung the room’s single light-source, powered by the tiny chip of an infinite series cell. The same cell was connected to a radio, which played a droning, shapeless instrumental melody.
Several of the other speakers were seated along the wooden bench below the light, including a wild-eyed man who claimed to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, and a tousle-haired young woman who advocated universal dietary reform, and the consumption only of recycled wood-fiber. She was arguing on her portable phone; he was looking at his wristwatch. “Can’t someone turn off that damn noise…” muttered the man, glaring at the radio.
Walter S. Kolanin noted idly that both the watch and the phone were powered by an infinite-series cell.
An hour went by, as the other speakers were called forth to address the gathering. Eventually the moderator stuck his head in backstage. He spoke above the droning noise of the radio. “The assembly has taken a final vote. Mr. Glen Kripsintomura is to be awarded the grant money for his efforts to establish a center to study of Zen Buddhist Jazz Music. We wish the rest of you the best of luck with your other projects, and hope that you will find whatever support you may need elsewhere. We’d like to thank you all for your participation.” The moderator gave them all a brief, insincere smile, and walked off to talk to the only press which had come to cover the rally, the staff astrologer from the local college newspaper.
With angry sighs and muttering, the group slowly dispersed, and shuffled off. Soon, only Walter Kolanin was left, sitting alone on the hard narrow bench, staring at the blank wall, his hands in his pockets. Above his head, the radio groaned on and on.
A very patient man, he thought himself to be. And yet…
He pulled out his left hand. In it, carefully folded, was a piece of computer printout paper. It was ten years old, yellowed, and faded. The message ran: “If certain elements of your civilization refuse to embrace radio silence, then it may be necessary to neutralize all power generation and transmission of your civilization without their consent. The inventions listed in the lines above were designed with a built-in vulnerability which the weapon of silence described below can exploit, particularly the quantum vacuum zero point infinite series energy generation battery. Naturally, so desperate a step will cripple your civilization, and should not be contemplated until such time as all peaceful means have been exhausted …”
He pulled out his right hand. In it was a cylinder wrapped in careful, interwoven patterns of copper wire, from which projected a rod of ceramic parallel to two rods of different metal alloys. The wires were connected by a switch and a rheostat to a nine-volt dry cell battery. The whole device seemed to be made of materials which could be bought at a hardware store for a few dollars.
He turned the rheostat to the lowest possible setting, pointed the ceramic rod at the energy chip powering the radio and the light bulb, pressed the switch with his thumb. The music of the radio fell dumb.
In the sudden darkness, he smiled grimly.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
