2 - Nico
It was just the two of them in the secure conference room, and Nico’s best guess was that the guy assigned to brief him, Dr. Hashimoto, was in his sixties.
Everyone he’d seen in this place was at least forty years older than Nico, making him feel like he was at school on an in-service teachers-only day.
His own fingers drumming against the tabletop because this was all going so much slower than he wanted it to, Nico ran down what he’d heard so far. “If we can’t see any stars through the anomaly, and we can’t see it either, you’re saying it’s like a black hole?”
“If it was a black hole there would be a gravity effect,” Dr. Hashimoto told him like he was an idiot. “But the spectroscopy is unusual for space-based matter.”
Nico sighed and typed the word on his phone.
“Are you texting?” Dr. Hashimoto sounded annoyed that Nico wasn’t hanging on his every word.
Nico was annoyed too. “Looking up spectroscopy .”
Dr. Hashimoto was only too happy to pontificate. “The way light—”
“—gets absorbed or passes through something.” Nico read the definition off his phone. “Got it. So how come we’re just seeing it now?”
Dr. Hashimoto set his jaw, annoyed, but he had his job to do, even if that included briefing someone as young as Nico. “The initial theory was the anomaly was a data artifact, a digital lens flare, if you will. Low priority follow-up.”
“What changed?” Nico asked.
“A software upgrade in June revealed the anomaly was traveling, heading toward the sun in our solar system. Computer modeling judged it an asteroid, composition unknown. Traveling at 64,000 kilometers per hour, its path was taking it 31.2 million kilometers from Earth’s orbit.
” Dr.Hashimoto shrugged. “Once again, low priority follow-up.”
“And now it’s stopped,” Nico said. “In precisely Earth’s orbit?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see the math.”
“We are PhDs here,” Dr. Hashimoto protested. “Are you even out of high school? This is just wasting our time.”
“Orders,” Nico said, reminding him it was out of both of their hands. “And you don’t have to stay. That way I’m just wasting my time.”
Air hissing past his clenched teeth, Dr. Hashimoto called up the data set.
1743
On screen the countdown showed Earth slamming into the anomaly in 05 DAYS 18 HRS 17 MIN . Impact was shown with a red X.
Whatever it was, that thing was a hundred soccer fields big.
“The numbers don’t lie.” Nico had been over the math behind the simulation he was playing for the Director twelve times. Earth’s path was steady. The anomaly’s path should have been steady too, but it wasn’t. Something had stopped this thing in space, parking it so Earth would crash right into it.
“Numbers lie all the time,” the Director’s digitally camouflaged voice shot back from the light blue Agency screen.
Leg bouncing with all this pent-up energy, Nico checked the traffic to Staten Island on his phone again—it was getting worse. Even pushing past the speed limit he was going to be at least an hour and a half late. Sam was going to be so pissed.
“Parkour.” The Director used Nico’s code name. He wasn’t used to it yet. “Am I keeping you from something?”
Nico bit back the yes —that he’d been ready to talk two hours ago but the Director had kept him waiting. After backing up the data to a thumb drive all that was left to do was review the math again. And again. So instead he asked, “What do you mean numbers lie?”
“Politicians have gotten pretty good at using just a few, selectively, to make their point—even if it’s the opposite of what the numbers really show.”
“But this is what the numbers show.” Nico gestured to the simulation. “If it’s not humans, and it’s not something that could happen naturally, then that math is easy too.”
“Aliens,” the Director said.
Nico didn’t have a different answer.
If it really was aliens, would they be friendly or… not? Nico wondered what that would mean. For him. For Sam. For humanity.
It was kind of overwhelming. But he was getting ahead of himself, and needed to keep it together.
Then the Director said, “What if instead it’s the age-old ‘crap in, crap out’?”
“Oh.” Nico got it. “You don’t know if we can trust the numbers coming in from the telescope.” It wasn’t a question. And it was the better alternative.
“We need to be sure,” the Director said. “Until then, we keep a lid on this. I don’t even want to imagine the worldwide panic…”
There was a knock on the conference room’s opaque glass door.
Nico held up a finger to let the Director know they were being interrupted. He pressed the button on the control console to make the glass transparent. Dr. Hashimoto waved. Nico pressed another button to unlock the door.
Dr. Hashimoto swung it in just enough to stick his head through. “Mr.Freeman, your helicopter has arrived.”
Corey Freeman was Nico’s new alias. He wasn’t used to that either. And he clocked that Dr. Hashimoto’s tone was different, like a helicopter coming to pick him up made Nico more worthy of respect, even if he was young.
“I’ll be right there,” Nico told him.
Dr. Hashimoto shut the door and just stood there outside the room, like a teacher waiting for a student to finish a test. No, Nico realized, it didn’t feel like that at all.
It was more like a student waiting for a teacher.
It was weird that in this situation he kind of outranked this adult.
The real world was so much better than school.
Nico turned to the screen to ask, “Helicopter?”
“We can’t have you be so late it blows your cover,” the Director said. “Barista training doesn’t generally have emergencies.”
Nico gave a slight snort. “Thanks.”
“Be ready. I have to make some calls, but you’ll probably be on a plane later tonight.”
“What happened to ‘Barista training doesn’t generally have emergencies’?”
“You’ll figure it out,” the Director said. “That’s one of the reasons we hired you.”