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The saucers only made the fifth item on the news. Coverage about the fuel queue fights and the up-coming Olympic bid were far more interesting than the fact that the aliens had spent yet another week doing nothing of any consequence. I got to work at about nine, having spent the last two hours sandwiched between life's cattle on the subway. It wasn't unbearable. It was just routinely unpleasant. I spent most of the journey listening to Carl Munce's breakfast show, trying not to laugh out loud as yet another victim fell for his prank calls.
At work, I dropped my Tab into its slot and waited for it to Synch with my desk. During this time I grabbed a coffee from the pot. Real, fresh coffee. It was better than a hug.
"Hail, Mary!" Declan called out as I passed his chair.
He was smiling, as usual, and eyeing me with that same eager expression. Of course he was married.
"Hi Declan. Did you have a game last night?"
He shook his head. "Mondays and Thursdays." He said. "It's tonight."
We made a little more small talk. All about soccer.
I was interested to see how few of my Friends on Capital mentioned the saucers in their feeds. Hardly any. There were a couple of moans about black-outs, usually recorded direct from handheld Tabs by the light of a portable lamp but not one of them made a single "figured it out" joke. It really had become old hat.
I framed myself on the camera window and recorded "Have you noticed how we've stopped being bothered about the saucers?" and posted it as my latest feed. My fame index has been suffering lately, dropping a massive eighty five points last week alone. Yeah, that's me: bore–ing.
Just as well for me that's what they thought. God, if they knew the truth of it, I'd be topping the Celebrity Index for months. I wouldn't be famous though. Unless I got careless.
Last night had been easy. One of the more regular assignments. The girl wasn't on her guard at all. We'd been sharing a bench at the launderette, watching the whites getting their monthly spin. We'd chatted about how much the darn places cost to use, and how it was so unfair that our respective landlords didn't provide facilities. It didn't take much to persuade her to take a walk with me. All it took was a little bit of sisterly camaraderie. A lie about running out of change and a quiet request that she kept me company on the dark streets while I popped out to the corner store to get cash.
She hadn't hesitated for a heart beat. Sure she'd walk with me. She hated walking the streets alone too. And she had nothing better to do until the final rinse.
A short time later, out of sight behind a softly buzzing electrical substation, I removed her kidneys and watched them steaming slightly in the crisp November air.
Imagine recording that for your daily feed? Just sit back and watch that Celebrity Index climb all the way up to number one!
Meanwhile, back in reality, I started my workload: credit refusal appeals. People who the computer had turned its virtual back on were now throwing themselves at our mercy and it was my job to salvage the lucky few.
About half way through the day one of the saucers passed over. It was relatively fast moving, and way above the clouds so the ground effects were light, just a gradual brown out, rather than a full on stone-age power cut. Everyone just took it as a cue to take a little break, and we talked about the finalists on Search for a Song.
Of course, six months ago, it had been a very different story. The saucers had arrived half way through the afternoon here. Other places in the world were waking up to them, or discovering them in the dead of night. It didn't make much difference because the reaction was pretty well universal. Cars crashed. People ran out of buildings, or back into them. Crowds converged, crowds scattered. The governments appealed for calm, while at the same time mobilising every man woman and donkey capable of standing in line.
For a few hours, the world collectively freaked. Like ants after their little twig hills had been kicked over. But pretty soon, the worst of the chaos subsided, and mankind collectively looked skyward to see what would happen next.
Nothing.
Not one thing. They passed over our heads as apparently oblivious to us as clouds, showing no reason or logic to their paths. They meandered. They flitted. They slid on by. Occasionally they stopped, or changed direction, but no matter how hard we tried, nobody could find any sense of what these saucers might be interested in.
Of course, we had tried communicating with them. Various attempts were made to initiate contact. There were even shows of aggression from one or two of our less welcoming nations. All of this was met with complete indifference. Perhaps that's an understatement. The better way to describe it would be to say that our actions were simply not met.
Eight days later, we had our message. At just before eighteen minutes past nine in the morning, and all over the world, for about five and a half minutes, the same six words, over and over:
"Have you figured it out yet?" It came through every speaker. It played at every cinema, on every radio, from every knife and fork, earring or arrowhead. Anything which was made of metal became a crystal clear receiver for that short space of time.
Of course, the message wasn't only transmitted in English. The saucer pilots, who ever they were, made sure that their question reached every ear in its native language. Where ever there was a national boundary, whether river, road or sea, the words switched to what ever was appropriate. So, every human being on the planet heard the question. No matter how remote they were.
Of course, our initial answer had been "yes."
In different corners of the globe, great minds got together and released answers on the same frequency the saucers had used. All kinds of things were tried. They started simple, of course. The sequence of pi to however many decimal places you could care to count, complex energy equations, DNA, the table of elements. You name it. We showed it off.
Nothing. Nada. Goose egg.
Then it was the turn of the religious leaders. I think just about all of them took their turn addressing the great floating discs. Everything from the recitation of the Ten Commandments to Hare Krishna chants were tried on for size. All met by stony indifference. They even let a deputation of Atheists have a go, after they'd made such a fuss about not being included.
Five days and some random hours later, the question came again. This time for about fifty seconds longer.
I remember reading the list of the things they'd tried. Symphonies by Mozart and Mahler. Computerised gobbledegook based on fractal algorithms, massed choirs, the thoughts of Chairman Mao, recorded Whale song, amplified sounds of babies' heart beats, readings from poets, plays by Shakespeare. What ever we'd got, we let them have it.
In the end I think we just plain ran out of things to try. Everyone in the whole world seemed to look at one another and just, kind of shrug.
The next time we got that question – twelve days or so later, the world's governments had reached a decision.
"Have you figured it out yet?" They told the truth. "No."
Well, it didn't make the blindest bit of difference. The saucers still went about their random business, showing so little purpose that they may as well have been blown by the winds.
I checked Capital for want of something to do other than reject finance appeals. Lucy had recorded a response to my feed.
"Oh God, yeah. They may as well just get lost right now, don't you think? I mean, it's not as if they're like, doing anything. I got stuck on the way home yesterday for like half an hour while one of them went over..." And on she went. Ranting for well over four minutes but definitely not saying anything new. I scored her a double thumbs-up just to be nice.
Of course, there were people who thought these saucers were the second coming. That the Chariots of the Gods were amongst us and that our actions were being judged by angels. They were half right.
The crime rates dropped to just about zero. Predictably enough, church attendances leapt to pre-war levels. And I'm talking world war one. It was the suicide rate that caught the headlines though. Whether it was from stress, shock, a deluded belief that it was what the saucers wanted, or sheer disappointment that E.T. was so brain freezingly dull, the number of people taking their own lives doubled in the six months after planet fall.
And naturally, it was a big time to be a cult leader. These guys sure did know how to capitalise! Over night, every snake oil salesman, charlatan, conspiracy theorist and divinely inspired con artist was declaring an exclusive monopoly on the "truth" as the saucers saw it. A direct line to the mother ship, which could be shared for... Well, insert the material sacrifice of your choice.
Which is ironic, I guess. Because of all the theories surrounding the Saucers, it was some of those crazies who were actually the closest to the truth. But it was hardly as if they knew it. I looked at the clock... Still another seven hours to push until I could get out of the office and make contact again.
I sighed, and considered grabbing another coffee, or maybe even seeing how long I could distract Declan for before the shift supervisor got on my case. Instead, I just went back to my work, content for now to let the memories of the night before fill me with their rewarding glow.
I had knelt over the body of the launderette girl, as the saucer rolled slowly overhead, blotting out the stars, but replacing that lost light with its own watchful glow. I knew them. They had revealed themselves to me on nights such as this. They were deeply alien. Their warm, twisted bodies of dark leather and rippling white tendrils would have dwarfed even blue whales; each pilot filling the milky confines of its vessel with their mountainous bulk.
The knife was in my hand, and they watched. I watched too, not quite understanding but knowing it was making sense to them. Her body had opened to reveal a fractal map of veins and arteries, fibres and molecules. My fingers worked on the solution.
The readout.
The lines of entrails, the fall of the blood. The precise location of the organs, right down to the separating of red and white cells. To them, it all made sense. This body, a complex chart, a pattern, as intricate and infinite as the galaxy itself. This is what they had come to see. This was our answer.
So far the police hadn't caught up with me. I don't know why, but somehow I knew the saucers were protecting me. Maybe it helped that everyone assumed a serial killer would be a man. It's fair enough. I wouldn't have exactly chosen this way of life. The saucers chose me, and who was I to argue?
I snapped back to the present again. Declan was chatting with Amy, who was wearing one of those "I've figured it out!" T Shirts that were so completely "last year" I was almost embarrassed for her.
"Hey Amy." I called. "Nice shirt. So what's the answer."
She smiled back. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."
"You know," I said. "I might just do that."
***
This work has been created under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.
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