Tea and Aliens; no way to run an alien invasion: Bureau of Alien Interactions

By C. T. Walbridge

The Ur network neutralizes space and time. Without warning, it connects with Nolan, whose life is about to need alien intervention. Since the network puts everything at zero distance from everything else, there are a lot of aliens, -- and they are much too close by.  All of them are different.  And all of them have different problems –which have now become Nolan's problems.

Our hero, with his new love, Fiona, wind up in charge of an intergalactic nexus… which is a house in a quiet little suburb. Unfortunately, terrestrial biology is not compatible with alien body chemistries.  Even worse, alien technology is not compatible with terrestrial technology. Nolan and Fiona have the job of keeping those chemistries and those technologies separated. 

It is not helpful that various  earlier visitations, over millennia, have left some peculiar artifacts on this planet.

These have to be found and returned. Or, at least, shut down.

 Is it all a Government secret?

No, Earth Governments are trying desperately not to know anything about this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. T. Walbridge
• Release date: Nov 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386615163

C. T. Walbridge

C. T. Walbridge is retired from working as an environmental biologist. Currently tracking the co-evolution of human and artificial intelligence. Stories; “High Cotton,” in  Intel’s Tomorrow Project Anthology, 2011; “The Lost Gospel Writers,” in Alternative Theologies, 2018;  “Babble,”   in Endgames, 2019. He follows the algae news the way some people follow the sports news.   Apparently incapable of writing dystopian fiction.  Even hideous hordes of invading aliens are good guys. Or… they’re doing the best they can.

Book preview

2  Fiona 

Ichecked into my hotel and the next thing I did was to stay up all day.  Walking, to try to force my body into the shifted time zone. I recommend the Powerhouse Museum and the Aquarium.

Her name is Fiona Barnett.  We met that evening for an early dinner at my hotel’s restaurant.  She was one reason I’d come half way round the world.

Maybe the main reason.

The place was softly lit and filled with quiet chatter. The maître d’ who led me to the table was a Pacific Islander.  Fiona was already there. She stood  to hug me.  She wore green silk. The kiss on the cheek was unexpected but formal.  

You look good, I said, stepping back.  She looks great, is what I was thinking.  She let go of my hand.

I wondered what she would look like with her hair down.  It was long and auburn, shifted from the carrot-red it had been when I first knew her. She had a faint spray of freckles and perfect lips—  which I was trying not to think about.  We slipped into the seats in the semi-isolated booth. 

How's life been for the last decade? I asked. Rugged enough to keep you in good shape, apparently.

Good, she smiled, The job is hard work, the departmental politics are rotten, and I'm between relationships.

One thing hadn't changed; straight out.

Sorry to hear it....  The hell I was. The relationship part I mean.

I'll recover. I'm learning to live alone.  She didn't say and like it, possibly a significant omission.

Otherwise I managed to get through dinner the way any old friend should. The  business outfit she wore was probably supposed to understate her figure.  Didn't work for me. 

We caught up on each other's lives and she told me what I really shouldn't miss while I was in Sydney.  In Australia. 

She had made arrangements for me to tag along on several of her interviews. I was shifting careers, attempting to move from science to science journalism, so I was grateful for the opportunity.  I was even more grateful for an excuse to hang out with her. But I wasn’t ready to mention that.  Though it probably showed.

With all the catching up, I never did find out why she had asked me to move the trip up; weeks earlier than I had originally planned.  She was a distracting presence.  I had ordered the crocodile tetrazzini, I don’t remember if I liked it, because my focus was on my dinner partner.  She was as charming, and as challenging, as I remembered her.  After dinner, in the hotel lobby we parted again. Never had I been so aware of the absence of a kiss....

The day after our quiet little reunion I spent my time alone, on a city tour, sleepy in the afternoon. My body was still remembering U S Pacific Time.  Sydney is fascinating, but by evening I was exhausted and turned in early.  Even so, I couldn’t sleep right – I had some of the damndest dreams. 

That odd flight attendant apparently hadn’t finished with the safety instructions.

But this time I was  dreaming. 

I’m almost sure of it.

3  Psycho

The next day I helped Fiona with the first interview.  But I just tagged along.

The interview was at  the University – my kind of environment – so I should have been comfortable.  The grassy quadrangles and the Victorian brick buildings were imitation Oxbridge.  The plantings were not:  There were gum trees (eucalyptus),  and the blooming shrubs had bizarrely un-British flowers.

We went directly to the Psych Department.  The woman who met us near the receptionist's desk looked  too old to be student. She wasn't. She was one of Dr. Alton's experimental subjects.  She had short dark hair with a few strands of gray.

Dr. Bradley Alton was attempting to quantify psychic talents, and this woman turned out to be one of them.  She introduced herself: Call me... Leonora, but that pause told me that it was not her real name.  Leading us upstairs to our appointment she asked me: How do you like Australia? I was already beginning to think of that as The Question.  I said something diplomatic.  Actually what I liked most about the entire country was Fiona... though I was keeping an open mind about everything else.

Fiona preceded me into Alton's office, but our volunteer guide stopped me with a hand on my arm just outside the doorway.

What I see for you, she said from too close and looking into my eyes,  ... an exciting visit, full of unexpected experiences... She paused... And... she paused again...different biology.  Well, yes, it was Australia.

She wore too much makeup.  Exciting was not in my plans. At least, nothing that involved this person.  Extending this conversation wasn't in my plans either.

A moment later I was in the office with the door closed behind me.

What was that about? I asked.

Dr. Alton was a man whose ancestors clearly had included both Asians and Polynesians.  He had caught part of the exchange, and looked pained. 

Whatever she told you has maybe a twelve percent chance of being accurate. But I do wish she’d let people ask first.

There were two visitors’ chairs in front of the desk. This made the tight space event tighter. The office was lined with bookshelves,  and the file cabinets and the floor were piled with even more books.  The top of the desk obscured by  a sea of paper.  The closed laptop looked like a liferaft floating on top of it all.

Fiona and I both turned on recorders for the formal part of the interview. It was a duplication of effort, but I was learning the routines.

Dr. Alton explained that he was working with private funding to quantify and certify paranormal talents.  If they exist.

Somewhere during that interview I felt an odd feeling of warning. Maybe deja vu.  But it was so shadowy that I couldn’t pin it down. I didn’t mention it. But it would not go away, just faded into background awareness. 

Parapsychology, if it does exist, is plagued by a high signal-to-noise ratio.  Accepting for the moment that there actually was any signal to be found,  I asked if the discovery of interfering factors would lead to technology that would enhance the mental effects.  The professor would not speculate.  In fact, I thought he protested too much.  Fiona and I represented the press, and he may have been wary of sensasionalist reporting.  This was a topic  that had a following true believers – sometimes fanatics—who were desperate to have their covictions confirmed.  After the that part of the interview ended,  he too us on a short tour of the laboratory – a series of isolation rooms each with a bare desk and a chair. The subjects faced the wall opposite the observation window  Some of the mental tests  were trying to access information at a distance.  Other tests were to find information that didn’t exist yet; precognition.  Success rates for both are low, but when they do happen, neither distance nor time seems to make any difference. 

Locating archeological sites turns out to be a relatively unbiased way of testing.  The hard evidence either is found. or it is not. 

What’s the range of general ESP?  I asked.

He paused, still looking into an isolation booth where we could see the back of  a male subject was taking some kind of paper test. Then Dr Alton turned toward me.

For obvious reasons we’ve been limited to the diameter of the earth –  astronauts are too busy to be collecting such noisy data.  However, there doesn’t seem to be an inverse square law involved, so eventually space travelers at extreme distances may have no other choice.  But only if we can get the noise level down.  Also, since future and past are irrelevant here, this could get around some of Einstein’s limitations.

Fast communication across light years?  I suggested.

Unknown, he answered, But keep in mind that there’s a huge difference between the diameter of the Earth and a light year.

"How would you aim the signal?’ Fiona asked.  She had mentioned that she had an interview coming up at the radiotelescope site in Parkes.

A target’s direction or even the distance has no bearing ... the social distance seems to be what matters.

I asked:  So, if somebody’s mentally and emotionally similar to me, then I’m more likely to get in touch with him?

"Yes, partners do better with each other. But what would be the point of that?

You’d have nothing to talk about, except to agree.... That’s why the internet was invented.

You’re right of course, about the similarity, he went on. "The ‘social distance’ hypothesis is a rough approximation. There are rules  here that we don’t understand. With our current experiments we hope to get closer to how this works.  That is, when it does work, which is hardly ever."

I was stuck on an earlier topic:I like to think of myself as unique, I said, but out of  millions of people there has to be somebody a lot like me.

Billions he corrected, but remember the process is not distance limited.  There may be a lot more people within range. Whatever ‘range’ means in this context.

And, I said, making the connection, whatever ‘people’ means in this context.

Then he took us to a secondary lab in another building.  It served as isolation space for blocking the transmission of information by unconscious clues. Body reading as opposed to mind reading.

As he took us across the Quad, our little trio had to filter through conversational groupings of students moving in the opposite direction. 

I tried a personal question.

About Leonora: Could she really predict anything for me?

She has a better chance than most, but not by much. As I said she's twelve percent, at best.  In your case she’s working under a handicap, though she won’t admit it: She's terrible with men.

I glanced at Fiona. She looked amused.

For you, her predictions are likely useless, Dr. Alton continued, ...whatever they are.

That may have been an indirect way of saying that she was attracted to me.  Or maybe repelled.  Interesting. But irrelevant.

We were dodging streams of students. Even the ones who seemed to be walking alone weren’t isolated.  They were connected variously via earphones or mobile phones   There was the smell of freshly mowed grass.   It was winter back home. 

The trees along the walks were immense and probably dated from the days of the British Empire.  In one such tree was a roost of dozens of fruit bats.  Another name is flying foxes. They were hanging inverted, but not quite at rest. Now and then one would unfurl its wings, a span of nearly a meter, and it would flutter to a nearby branch to rehang itself in what it decided was a more comfortable position.

We were walking through a brilliantly sunny day, but I was sharply reminded of the season at home. Simultaneously I felt a cold gust of wind and quick spatter of cold stings against my face.  Not summer sensation, I took off my glasses and looked at the lenses from the front.  Several water droplets clung, one of them  held a rapidly melting bit of ice.  As a source of liquid the bat roost was too distant and there were no lawn sprinklers close enough.  So, not bat-related, and not lawn related.... 

The conversation went on:

Leonora’s particular handicap reminded me that the mental gifts, are readily contaminated with other emotions, attiudes, and superstitions.  This mix can produce ssubjective distortions of  reality.

That's one of the reasons Dr. Alton is working on this:  So that the people he finds can learn to live  with the gifts more sanely and productively.

It doesn’t help that some of the most passionate believers have no  paranormal talent whatever.  And  they may be more psychotic than psychic: That’s  the gist of what I heard.  Alton’s  phrasing was substantially more diplomatic.  It was going to be a challenge to get his combination of empathy and skepticism into publishable form.

He did manage to convince us us that, between the ever-skeptical members of the science establishment and the flat-out crazies, there were a few gifted people who might be helpful.

Someday anyway.

It was only later that I realized that I’d ignored that unseasonable spray of  what felt like sleet.  Misplaced habit; it would hardly bear mentioning where I had come from.

After we arrived in the satellite lab, we were able to interview a few of Alton’s subjects, separately, in a small conference room. Another pastel-walled  bare space with no distractions or decorations. Only chairs and a table, But before the interviews started Dr. Alton cautioned us that these experimental subjects were, in all other respects, ordinary people.  Their lives might, or might not, be complicated by erratic talents that they didn't understand and couldn't control.  And some of the adjustments they made were odd ones.  He was right about the warnings. By the third and last subject interview I realized it would be hard for Fiona to get this into print without making some of these people come across as pathetic.  I decided that I would probably learn a lot by being in on the interview and then seeing the resulting article. I was thankful that I was not the one writing it up.

4  Running

After that Fiona had other obligations and I took a Harbour tour.

I had trouble getting to sleep that night; body clock still confused, but eventually....

Dreaming of being pursued is common enough, but this was different. 

I wasn't running from the usual dream monsters.  I was running with them. There was foot-dragging snow at first. Then it was gone. We were all fleeing in the same direction. The creatures were with me – not chasing me. But I was paying too much attention to them, and not looking where I was going, so I stumbled.  A thick, dry tentacle from somewhere overhead hoisted me back onto my feet, and back into the race.  I almost looked up, but then something like a levitating salmon shot out ahead of me,  passing too close to my left shoulder.  I stumbled again and an immense insectile leg reached over from the right, to steady me and help me forward.  

We were like wildlife running from a forest fire. I was focused on the escaping, but nothing around me resembled any Earth creature.  Yes, they had legs, fins, heads, fur, feathers, shells, and scales. Usually assembled  symmetrically.... But there was no time for further classification

Behind us all was the pursuer, vaguely glimpsed.  I got the impression of no monster at all,  just a human being – with an improbably large rifle.

5  On the Other Side

It was the interview on the second day that was traumatic.  When we had parked the car it was obvious that we were in a marginal neighborhood.  That was one of the reasons we were there.  Such places seem to be an unavoidable side effect of urban life.  The racial mix was different from home.  But economics were the same – a level of poverty that seems to stay locked into the social structure for generations.    Dr. Angela Lee was clearly Chinese, her doctorate was in math,  from the National University of Singapore, according to a certificate framed on the wall.  She settled us in worn armchairs, apologizing for the state of her office.  That was hardly necessary.  Dr Lee’s office was as neatly organized as any I’d  ever seen. Behind her, a hanging scroll depicted a pastoral scene. The single bookcase was topped with a small bronze sculpture representing one of the Buddha’s disciples.  

Fiona described the kind of information she was looking for.  And why she thought we had come to the right place.  This was an assignment for Advances in Australia;  a biennial publication that focuses on genuinely useful applications of science.  It does not draw from corporate press releases. Instead it  uses real investigative journalism to report on uses of technology and sociology that measurably improve human lives.  Dr. Lee was doing cost/benefit analyses on social programs intended to help the poor.  In most countries these analyses do not seem to concern lawmakers – who apparently make policy on the basis of whatever is popular with voters.

In the course of the interview it became clear that some of the programs that politicians had mandated had the effect of making the local  poverty more permanent.  On the other hand some of the approaches they hated would have the opposite effect.

The interview was over and we were on the sidewalk outside the building.

In the space one step and the next—between one second and another:

I had the instantaneous mental image of a crowd, doing something together.  If there could be words they would have been:

"All together now....

Heave! 

And they did. 

And something moved. 

Something huge.

Effect preceeded cause.

Past, present and future all converged.  For an instant.         

Back on the sidewalk....

There were loud sounds and suddenly bullets were underlining the problems of urban decay....

Whle we approached the car I had been talking to Fiona and not paying attention, so I wound up outside the driver's door of her car.

After two or three slugs hit the pavement we were both inside and she’d pushed the keys at me.

I hadn't meant to drive.  Not in a new city, in a new country, with a right hand drive, on the 'wrong' side of the road.

But being a target makes for hasty decisions.

I don't remember doing the bumper damage and I don't remember when the other bullets hit the car.  What I do recall is scaring the hell out of several other drivers before getting back on the left.  I rounded the corner far too fast. 

Then it was over.  We weren’t being chased.

We were so rattled that it was mostly luck that we found the police station. 

The hard part was going to be the recovery – cooling down.

We were directed to chairs in front of a desk in the noisy common room.  The cop assigned to us was young and competent.  He asked a lot of questions, while trying to put us at ease. And trying to calm us down.  I was getting the hang of Aussie English.  Fiona and I were just happy to be inside the station.  This crew seemed like cops anywhere, maybe more polite. And very busy.

No, neither Fiona nor I were involved with gangs or drugs. Up to this point we both had led fairly quiet lives.  Which we'd like to get back to as soon as possible.  She's a journalist, I'm a former employee of the United States government.  No, not CIA, and not FBI either.  Environmental Protection Agency; where the opposition tends to throw lawsuits, not bullets.

We were fifteen time zones away from Washington D C, so it was going to be a while before the Aussie authorities could check my background.  However, the American Consulate had never heard of me, or at least nothing bad.  Neither had Interpol.  Good news, I guess.  For once I was happy to be inconspicuous.

We had been in one of Sydney’s bad neighborhoods, but another cop made it a point to assure us that this didn't usually happen: This isn't Chicago after all. he said.

Sorry, he added.  He must have seen my expression

Then, even with Fiona's savvy and her journalist’s credentials, it took us almost two hours to get out of the station. 

I probably told them more than I should have: The U S government and I had parted company on fairly good terms.  But way too soon for me to retire. I needed to be on the other side of the Earth.  It was cold in the northern hemisphere and I had a standing invitation to visit Australia.   From an old college friend who had gone on to become a journalist. And I was looking for another career.  Science journalism seemed to be a good fit. And this was a chance to get warm, do a little apprenticing, and resume a friendship. 

Left out: Maybe more than a friendship. Though that might be asking a lot.

6  Denis

That night, back at my hotel, I discovered something left over from the first interview.  My computer case is for the laptop and  the little recorder, but someone had slipped something into an outside pocket.  It was a note, hurriedly scrawled, on the back of an ESP test form. Hard to decipher. Nonsensical doggerel as near as I could tell. 

Apparently Leonora had decided there was something else I needed to know.  I ignored it.

But I kept it.

The day after we had spent so much time with the police, Fiona was working on a different project.  I was off on my own again. Doing tourist things.  Nervously.  I did a tour of the city and checked out the Zoo. Koalas in person aren’t nearly as friendly they look. Though the general run of Australians are friendlier.  With the possible exception of whoever was behind our recent encounter.

In the afternoon I finally called Fiona, she canceled something and we met for dinner at a pub near the campus.  It was faux British, with dark wood paneling. Almost authentic, except for the varieties of beer.  And the kangaroo burgers on offer.

She explained that the police had decided that the shooting had just been a bit of random violence, nothing personal.

It felt very personal. 

She told me not to worry about the incident.  She would be doing a follow up interview by phone.  No point in going back into that neighborhood again.  No point whatever.  

The rest of the dinner talk was still more catching up on each other's lives.  We had to lean close in order to be heard over the noisy background of students having a well-lubricated good time.  Slowly awareness of that milieu  fell away, I was rediscovering the quirky world-view that this woman had—on everything. And she pressed me on why I had decided to change careers: I had discovered I was much happier writing about biology than actually working in the lab.  And she was the only real journalist I knew....So maybe I could learn something from her.  Of course that was not the whole story.  And I think she knew that   

I was ignoring some of her thoughtful pauses. Filling them with recitations of my life in the years since our paths had last crossed.  I could still read her expressions; worry. She was worried, possibly she was going to tell me there was little chance of resuming our long-paused relationship.  I didn’t want to hear that. More than ever  I didn’t want to hear that. I filled in with talk about myself. Maybe a little desperately.

Close up, she was more beautiful than I remembered.  I hadn’t idealized her in my memory.  I didn’t ask her what her perfume was....Even that much might have been too personal. She might take it as a sign that I was too interested.

Interested doesn’t  begin to cover it.

Awareness  of the present came back when across the noisy room someone pounded on a table.  The pub noises faded into near silence.

This place is known for soapbox speeches... Fiona whispered. The guy who had just rapped the hard wood might have been a student.  He was older than  the average for the room, and  too ruggedly dressed for faculty.  The crowd must have known him – they quit their conversations and turned in his direction.

Friends, he began, "I’m going to explain alien life forms – residents of other planets.

"I hear they come here to abduct people.  We ought to be thankful for that. 

The only problem is – they bring them back!" 

On the other hand, and this is proof of extra-terrestrial intelligence – they reject idiots.  Catch-and-release.  Reel the bloke in, measure his IQ; if he’s under the limit, you throw him back.  Apparently there’s a lot of throwbacks.  Which doesn’t do our gene pool any damn good.   He got applause.

Never mind that, but  someday the aliens are going to show up in the streets of Sydney.  And they’re going to be weird. And ugly. But not half as ugly as some of you.   Without getting  specific, he extended his hands in both directions, to rest them briefly on the heads of two of his companions:  A sort of reverse blessing.  

"I want you to promise me that when you do see aliens in the street, you’ll ask them, polite as you please, to take more people – and this time drop them off someplace else.  Some other planet.  Maybe some other galaxy.

Just to make things easy for the aliens I’m starting a list... taking names: Who do we want off the planet?

The shouted suggestions started with the conservative branch of the government, then it jumped to unpopular sports figures, then to heads of  distant, undemocratic governments, then back to local celebrities, after that I couldn’t keep track. It got loud and rowdy, rude and raunchy.... which was the whole point.  It was a noisy expression of comaradary....

After that diversion had run its course, Fiona seemed to brush aside her pensive mood.  I was relieved.  I didn’t want to hear anything negative about our relationship.

That is, about our possible relationship.

She introduced me to a few of her friends and acquaintances.  

Her friends were some of the regulars at the pub, people who could put up with the