Mike Simpson

Hello

Filtered through the window the duster-yellow sun struck the sculptured flesh of his blunt face. He hated the morning. She was still sleeping, and in envy he nearly crashed out of bed just to disturb the beauty of her slumber. He didn’t; she looked so calm and so free of all the anxiety that gnawed at his body at that early hour. He checked the nursery, and the sweet murmur of the breathing beds assured him that all was well.

He slid from the house a solitary figure, the only person alive on the sleeping street. All his sounds sang in the cool morning air; the door catches and the engine spinning echoes across the low, cloud-skidding skyline of the settlement.

He had made the journey so many times before that he didn’t even have to think; every action automatic. Even the faithful vehicle trundled robotically up the slow gradient towards the bleak summit and the old listening station, as if being operated by some higher force. The route was used very little and the vegetation was gradually overflowing the margins and reclaiming the territory it had lost in its old battle with the black god of progress. Here and there he was forced to avoid sweeping trails of invading weed. It was a cold, steel-silver sun now. Nothing stirred. He was the only movement in the painted landscape.

Without braking, or so it seemed, the vehicle rumbled to a halt at the entrance to the flaking exterior of the listening station. Only he went there now. They had long given up a full operation. There was no funding and he often wondered why he bothered. They had listened and hoped for so long. And nothing. Not an alien sound to tell people that they weren’t the only living planet in the lonely blackness of space. There was a time when everyone believed there were other worlds and intelligent life like them. They had built several listening stations at that time. This was the only one left, and he only came here infrequently now; merely to change and maintain the recording instruments.

It wouldn’t be long before he would not bother. The building was decrepit, the door creaked in its old age and needed a lifting hand to open it, and the metal stairway that led to the huge receiving bowl shook and was near collapsing. Habitually he climbed to the top and tugged open the glass door. So mechanical were his movements, so well rehearsed his actions that he did not notice the winking red light and slow warble of the alarm. And when he did notice he could only mutter curses associated with malfunction. Then it dawned. It smashed him in the face and knocked him faint. There was something recorded!

He reversed the device to return to the beginning of the recording, and as it bubbled and squealed with the rewinding sounds the excitement electrified his whole body. With an awkward clunk and hiss it was ready. His insides rumbled and he felt his last meal licking at his throat. Sweat glided down his rubber skin. He pulled down the lever...

...There was a whirring and a scratching. A pause. A monotonous perhaps discordant noise mechanically whispered through the emptiness of space...

‘Hello, this is an announcement from the Federal Space Agency in Nevada, United States of America on the planet Earth. We are a globe in a solar system similar to yours, the third from our sun, and the only known planet to support life. We have chosen to broadcast to planets likely to be parallel to ours and that could possible sustain intelligent life. This message will be sent on ten separate occasions at an interval we calculate to correspond to one of your days, and will be followed by a laser pulse to assist location. Please respond if you receive this. The message ends...’

Dumb-struck he waited for more. He just stared at the flapping wire and coiled metal that now held the precious sounds. Motionless he waited. There wasn’t anything.

For a very long time he watched the winding mechanism trundle round, and even when it stopped he watched. Yet he wasn’t watching at all. He was trying to make sense of it all. Trying to wake from the shocking reality. And when he was half sensible he felt a twinge of disappointment. He really had always believed they would make contact and that all the sceptics were wrong. But, was that a language? And if it was who could tell what was being said. He could envisage this great breakthrough being a waste of time. It had never dawned on him, and he felt ridiculous for not doing so, that they wouldn’t speak his language and use his range of tone and inflection that made his tongue so rhythmic and beautiful. What was that grating drone and was it meant for him? For them?

On the way home he held the message tightly in his apricot hands and fondled the harsh metallic skin of the recording as if it were a priceless jewel. It was.

She was preparing the late meal when he arrived home. She mentioned his lateness and he forced a smile. She told him of her disappointment that they hadn’t been together that day, and his face widened and the corners of his crisp mouth curled and he grinned broadly. She looked into his laughing eyes and tried to find the guilt she had hoped to implant, but he beamed and he whistled a long foolish note that hardened her stare and tingled her skin. She was angry with him now. He brandished the recording in its glistening case and she ignored it. In front of her irate visage he wielded it and smirked smugly.

Seeing he was losing her attention, and definitely her sympathy he sat her down. She was still seething. He explained to her about the message. She shrugged her velvet body to signal her lack of interest in the subject, and register her disbelief. He spoke softly to her like any one wishing to initiate empathy. And as he spoke he continued to grip with an iron grasp the recording, and keep it in secure proximity to his warm, spongy body. He played the bland sounds to her and she tried not to listen out of spite. When the recording wailed to a close she searched his sparkling eyes with a glowering puzzlement, and with that look asked a thousand questions he could not answer; fundamental was the meaning of these alien sounds and from his stomach he wished he was wise enough know the secrets of this stuttering noise, and to tell her questioning eyes.

That night he didn’t sleep as he usually did; drifting off when the mercury sun slipped down and the night-charged sky gripped the settlement. She slept, a fitful sleep, but the young ones breathed warm and rich with their normal heavy rushing noise and sang and warbled a glorious slumber.

Who would listen to him? Who would believe him? Long gone were the pioneers who established the listening station waiting for such a day, and long gone were the ones who could have, would have, helped. He felt alone with his secret. He was impotent now. Yet, there were some learned ones, teachers and such who might not think him eccentric or mad, know of his work at the station; a diligent servant, respected, sound and sincere. Yes, just to find out what the message said; meant.

He played it several times in the coolness of the dark place in which he sat. If it was a language there must be ways of discovering its secrets, of deciphering and translating. And once that was achieved the possibilities, he perceived, were both rousing and scary.

It was a long time before he could let this prize leave his curled hand. Putting it down for even a few moments hurt. But he knew he had to go elsewhere. The recording was useless as a garbled noise. He had to let someone touch it, examine the oracle and help him enjoy his discovery. It was personal now. He had had the vision, the faith, and now this was his baby. It would have been stillborn if the others had had their way.

At the highest place of learning, two settlements away, he was met with suspicion and doubt. Two academics were interested to meet him but he was not sure whether it was out of scientific promotion or to poke cheap fun. Both appeared to approach him with some degree of the former and a little more of the latter. They took the recording from his tight grasp, assuring him of their concern for its security, but only really to satisfy what they saw as his over-zealous concern for the package he carried. He could tell from their body language, as they thrust the recording onto their player that they were only satisfying the demands of the unnecessarily enthusiastic amateur.

They listened; and as they did so they changed, and they changed their attitude towards him, changed their attitude to the precious message, and sank into a very new realm of thought. They wanted to know more about the listening station, about the equipment, the efficiency of the receiver and the integrity of the dedicated engineer, struggling for credibility before them, who maintained it. It became clear they accepted it was, as he was in great pains to insist originally, truly a message from some other intelligent life. And, quite out of character, they were excited. He fought to keep in focus so they didn’t exclude him. There were extravagant promises to decipher the message and translate the drab sound using all the technology available. He was pleased, but did not leave until they had made a recording of their own and he could slink away clutching this most valuable of sounds.

It was several mornings and anxious hours later when they contacted him. Using every accessible piece of technology and established and new brains they had managed to convert the recording into a recognisable form. However, they still needed to achieve some real sense. He felt optimistic when they suggested he should visit them the next day.

When he arrived he was directed to another part of the building and shown into a small laboratory. The two of them tumbled in a short time later. They looked tired, but behind their weariness their eyes shone and sparkled. They both laughed in their own way. The first spoke. He explained how dubious they had been at first and admitted they had been more interested in him than the supposed message that he brought. Indeed they considered him a freak and were prepared to study his behaviour rather than listen to some phoney tape. He was initially offended but this was short-lived as their obvious enthusiasm had quickly ousted these original doubts.

The second academic, eager to communicate, announced over the still-evolving truth about his first visit, that they had worked throughout the light periods and all of the dark - and they had managed to translate the sounds of the recording. The dreadful droning was a language and it truly was a message...from a planet called Earth. The sound was a being talking to them from planet Earth. All three sat in silence, he stunned and they watching his reactions. Planet Earth; another world; out there, people alive and trying to reach them. What would they be like; their language so dull? He was trying to imagine them, trying to piece together from a fragment everything about them.

He broke from his reverie when their voices continued. They explained how they had discovered the secrets of the tape, told him of the language structure, its weak aspects and its strengths, its probable development and, more importantly, what was being said. Both eagerly added that they had also the ability to trace the message and to reciprocate, to send their own; with, of course, his assistance. They were anxious to involve him. Even in their society where little was kept secret from the people this was one huge exception; at least for the moment. The receiving station offered a suitable site for assembling a transmitter without too much extra equipment needed, and hopefully without arousing any suspicion. Everyone was eager, even excited in their own way, to make contact. If they had been a race harbouring greater mistrust the beavering scientists may have thought through and identified some of the dangers contact across the forlorn void of space might throw up. They weren’t!

Throughout the immediate period all the energy they could muster was directed towards completing the transmitter. They bumbled and jumbled with a concoction of paraphernalia that at times resembled the demolition rather than the construction of a highly sophisticated communications device.

Following the successful attachment of all the parts there was an interval devoted to testing, much in the way the trajectory of a large field gun is achieved. There was the rotation of both planets to consider and other stars and intervening debris that might divert the signal. Very often, amidst the furious activity he was lost; baffled by the jargon, forfeiting the desperation that came with acute technical failure. But he understood the purpose. They worked around him, involving him with mundane fetching and carrying, but there were times when he could only marvel at their skill and enterprise.

The time came when the scampering activity and fine adjusting stopped, and each face sought another. What message to send? In place sat the incredible means, but its purpose temporarily sidelined in the frenetic activity. Similar to the one received? They met and volleyed ideas. Aspects were favoured and compromises agreed, deals struck and bargains sealed. Who they were, the planet they occupied and its position was enough; for now at least. There now grew concerns about the target planet and the minds of those who had sent this missive. Why would they want to worm out a response from hidden and unknown reaches of space. Who were they? What of the planet they occupied; was it dying, in the last throes of survival? Were there unscrupulous reasons for the reaching or beckoning hand across this great expanse; other sinister motives? Of course they had no experience of dealing with other civilisations, other cultures or worlds. They were poor communicators on their own planet. And of course they were the only ones in their solar system; alone. It was important, they judiciously decided, to only give the barest details in the first instance; much could be exchanged later.

...In the meantime...

At his desk, Brad Sherman folded and tucked another strip of gum into his dry mouth. He had recently kicked the smoking habit but his mouth still craved some therapy. Brad was one of a team of civilians working in the sensitive Government department quaintly called ‘General Communications’ but aptly nicknamed ‘Alien Watch’. It was here that the United States tried to discover whether there was intelligent life on other planets and make attempts to communicate with possible life forms elsewhere in the solar system, galaxy or universe. They churned out messages with post-room monotony and zapped any likely lumps of rock, according to Brad, that seemed suitable. There were some scientific guidelines but generally it was a rather haphazard activity and relied more on serendipity than on astute calculations. In recent years, with no success, interest had waned, and the unit had ‘downsized’. Congress was getting rather concerned about Government expenditure on wild notions and fanciful initiatives like ‘contacting aliens’.

‘What a game, eh?’ Brad called out to any listener in the room. ‘Did you see that final quarter?’

The desks sat empty and Brad spoke only to heavy piles of paper and humming screens. He never bothered to look, and with feet hung from a postilion filing cabinet continued discussing every basket and every move with an attentive regiment of neatly ranked, unmanned desks.

A scalding siren bit into his drifting conversation and threw him upright.

‘Holy shit!’ Brad gasped.

He shot round to confront other faces thrown conscious by the alarm. There were none!

‘What a time to be alone,’ he mumbled as he struggled to reach the ‘reception computer’. It stuttered momentarily and then stopped; a brief explosion of an event and then just the serene clucking of digesting innards. He rushed at the monitor and held it with both grappling hands as if wanting to shake it into activity again. He thrust his face at the screen. A few lines of white writing broke the blueness, buffered by the prompting of the flashing cursor. Brad swore.

Soon the room was filled with accruing bodies and vacant stares. Brad remained at the screen searching the words.

‘It’s arrived.’ Brad breathed the words onto the glass; slow, stony, deliberate words. The full room buzzed and frenetic bodies slalomed through the desks to his side. They pulled him back and he was swallowed by the engulfing throng and the tinkling excitement. A squat, bald head at the hub read aloud.

‘Hello,

We receive the message. We followed this laser pulse. We are a planet in a solar system similar to yours. We are the planet ...’

There followed a series of lines and quasi geometric symbols that had all onlookers twisting their heads and screwing up their eyes.

‘Is this some joke?’

‘What sort of message is this?

There followed whining and prodding questions and the shaking of heads and the pulling of braces and the deep inhalations that sighed explanations. In the depths of the long night they surveyed the few words over and over again; they read the print-out and poked the shimmering screen, scratched their heads and postulated in scattered groups.

Technicians sat immersed in calculations at screens crammed with rolling numbers, whilst others hunted through revolving databanks. Suited men with flapping visitors badges wandered from screen to screen, sour-faced and mumbling into clutched mobile phones. And at the doors, that usually swung to the push of carefree office staff, grim-faced men scrutinised every arrival and prevented any departure. The few words that blew down to the hungry computer from some insignificant planet in the floating dust of the universe were creating waves; first lapping ones and then a full blown tsunami.

Within the hour a senior advisor to the President was being ushered up the granite steps of the modest government building and into the electric room, and to those first words still sitting on the screen where they had landed.

He read them; to himself, aloud and to himself again.

‘Are we sure this is the real thing?’ He held his chin and shrugged. ‘It seems so, well, ordinary; and how come it’s in the damn English language? You certain this aint some bastard fucking us about?’

‘Well sir, we’ve traced it back and it seems authentic. We’re double checking the stats now.’ A white-coated, serious-mouthed scientist assured the official.

‘I want it triple-checked. No egg on faces with this baby for God’s sake. The President hasn’t been told yet. I want this watertight before I pass anything on; understand?’

‘It’s come from one of our target planets, we’re sure of that.’

‘Target planet?’

‘Yes, one of those where we reckon there’s a chance of life. It’s a haphazard affair but then everything to do with this business is. We have sent hundreds of thousands to all corners of the universe; well ones we can reach by laser communication in a relatively short period. Don’t ask me to give you any more than this.’ The scientist was on thin ice and he knew it.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ The White House advisor had given up and stroked his nose in thought. ‘Why the English and why only these few words?’

‘We reckon it’s a matter of using the words from our original message and no more. They may have managed to understand our message but have no further knowledge of the language to send more. That’s the consensus and I think I go along with that. We haven’t had much luck with the stuff at the end. It doesn’t give us much to go on. However, the most sophisticated computers we possess are grinding away at it.’

‘Okay, I’m going back to him now, and give him what I’ve got.’ The perspiration glided down his cheek, and all the other exposed skin shone with the same dampness.

The Oval Office in the Whitehouse had seen some lavish historic assemblies but the one now seated at the neatly prepared table, although it consisted of anonymous characters, was an austere clique about to debate a unique matter.

Necks stretched to and from other stretching, rotating heads that muttered in low, secret, conspiratorial tones. All was broken by the hurried entrance of the President followed by a scrum of supporting others.

‘Be seated ladies and gentlemen, we have much to do.’ He was polite yet impatient and had sat himself before the rest stumbled back into their vacated seats.

‘This has come at an awkward time,’ he fussed, ‘there’s a Summit Meeting next Thursday and this damn Memorial Day business at Arlington to attend this afternoon. It’s crazy!’ He shuffled papers and beckoned to a secretary. ‘Have I got all the reports here?’ he enquired of the woman.

‘Except the one from the Defense Department.’ She informed him.

‘Right, let’s proceed. We can’t wait any longer.’ He didn’t appear to be taking the matter seriously and was quite willing to rush through this ‘inconvenience’. ‘What have we got?’

‘What we have got, as you put it, Mr. President,’ the tone was one of annoyance, ‘is a goddam message from space; that’s what we’ve got!’

‘Okay, Roy, calm down,’ the President was alarmed at his manner.

‘I’m sorry,’ Roy Palmer, head of the CIA, was quick to add, ‘but I’m not sure you realise the significance of this. We have been literally searching space for years to see if there was anyone else out there, and now we have the answer. But, I’m sorry to say, we have been caught hopping. We have to decide what to do now.’

‘Right, let’s start from the beginning.’ The President was allowing himself to get into the serious mood.

One of the administrators at ‘General Communications’ went through the few enormously momentous seconds of receiving the message, and the background to the planet targeting strategy. It was a lengthy business and the speaker was straying into the realms of irrelevance in the opinion of the President.

‘Yeah! Yeah, okay. So where’s this message?’

‘A copy is on the third page of that pile in front of you, sir,’ the flapping speaker quickly added.

The President muttered into the paper that he held tightly with both hands. ‘Hello...message...system....planet...’ Only a few words were distinguishable from the muffled southern drawl. The paper was brutally thrown down. ‘Are we certain this crap came from outer space, gentlemen? It seems like nonsense to me.’

‘We are certain,’ two at the table chipped in simultaneously to reassure the President.

He scratched his head and rose from his seat. ‘Why only this?’

‘Probably all they could decipher from our original message.’ They could see him wavering, looking for an excuse to doubt what they were telling him. ‘Please, sir, this is truly a response from another planet supporting intelligent life, maybe like our own. We are on the verge of something so remarkable, so enormous...’ For a Government official this was the closest he could get to enthusiasm.

‘Okay, okay! So what’s the next step?’ The President was convinced, but no one was sure he was happy about it.

‘We thought we would make further contact, with perhaps a message from you. Given the readings we possess, we haven’t, and probably will never have, the technology to travel to that part of the Universe, but they might have the ability to reach us. This is what we want to explore. It’s the beginning, I hope, of a long dialogue. This opportunity is unique and we may never be able to talk to another extra-terrestrial civilisation again. My God I still can’t believe this!’

The President sighed and nodded agreement. ‘I suppose you have prepared something for me to say.’ He showed the normal resignation. The department was always one step, or more, ahead of him.

‘It’s in its final stages and we’ll need you to okay it, sir.’ This was unlike the department, but then of course this was a tricky one, not at all old hat like a statement about missile site incursion by members of the Soviet bloc.

‘When it’s done rush it to my office. I really want to see the response to this. I’m hovering at eighty per cent but not totally convinced on this one!’ He grabbed his papers and dashed for the door. ‘Thank you gentlemen, and ladies, of course.’ He had resumed his robotic command of courtesy once more.

A huddled group comprising diplomats, security experts and speech writers worked hard to perfect this most unusual response. It was hammered out without too many differences of opinion. Only the security members were erring on the side of caution, whereas the rest saw vividly and without complications the tremendous opportunity, and the concern over an aggressive alien population ready to swoop and dominate Earth as rather a banal idea born of sensationalist literature and incredulous film scripts.

Roy Palmer slammed the completed statement on the otherwise empty desk, in the absence of the President. But he wasn’t leaving it there for any prying eyes. He sat in a leather-seated carver opposite the giant desk, leaned his sharp chin in the bowl receptacle of his open palm and waited. It wasn’t long before he was startled by the brusque entry of the bustling President and his entourage. The lone paper was tugged from the table by the President’s swinging hand as he waltzed round his mahogany desk. He acknowledged Roy with the merest of grunts.

He read the interplanetary missive with a series of nods and heavy exhalations of air. It contained a greeting from him as the President of one of the countries of Earth (there was a note relating to the opportunity to mention it being the most powerful and influential), a brief description of the planet, an explanation of the present inability at that time to travel to their planet, an enquiry as to their ability to reach Earth and a final invitation to reply and maintain a dialogue. Following his message a large amount of technical data was to be sent to help the recipients efficiently decode the language and included essential data on the nature of Earth, its atmosphere and neighbouring planets of the solar system.

The President recorded his communication the next day. He forced them to make some cosmetic changes to make him appear more effective, but basically the structure remained.

And across millions of light years of great vacuous space and flailing battlegrounds of stinging debris, in another world; at the listening station that nestled hilltop, in the swarming brush and warmed by the stuttering solar breeze, they waited. Their simple signal, carved out of the message he had received at this very place, had been launched along the laser wake of that random, probing communiqué. Now they were hungry for more. Excitement was a little used emotion now, yet it was evidently bubbling just below the surface; shown only in the twinkle of their eyes and tight gripping of their thin mouths. No one had left the station. They had felt physically attached to the garbled electronic message thrown towards an unknown world; nothing of this extraordinary exchange could be forfeited for whatever reason.

When it came, the smarmy voice of the President of the United States, there was no ear-piercing siren or any alarm, just the marshmallow tones and the springing action of the recording mechanism. Quick movement for them was not possible, yet in their eyes they dashed to the loudspeaker that was dripping with the creamy voice of Mr. President. They understood nothing, yet they watched in the crisp silence the slow turning and winding of the machinery, and let themselves drown in the mild melody that meant contact.

The listening station was crammed with equipment and when the message had ceased, for it had been a lengthy business this time not just the exploratory gamble and the compact enquiry, it was crammed also with the lumbering forms waddling between all manner of apparatus, a bustling laboratory frantic to reach the meaning of this new communication. Throughout the orange glow of day and beneath the icy white light of the station, they toiled. This time there was assistance, and the stodgy language was rapidly revealing itself. By the end of two day and night sessions they met at the long table in the body of the larger room. Their words were full and all-encompassing and they sang with a comforting rhythm. They had discovered so much about Earth, and every facet announced to the assembly was greeted with soft warbling that expressed immense delight. Earth was a larger planet than theirs, the days therefore longer, years shorter, sun smaller, atmosphere similar, technology different, inhabitants odd but the same basic design, gravity greater... and so the list went on. Nothing was of too little significance; they were enthralled at every disclosure; the experience unique. They couldn’t wait to match and reciprocate the information they had received, although they didn’t have an exalted dignitary to speak on their behalf; there were no countries and no presidents. This didn’t deter them and they buried themselves, collecting all the data they needed to despatch to their eager counterparts on Earth.

The broadcast that they made the following day they were able to send in both their language and the language of Earth; they were not aware that this was only the language of part of the planet, such nonsense wouldn’t have been thought sensible and considered highly inefficient. Sadly they could only confirm that their technology, whilst superior in many respects to that of Earth in the field of space exploration, was unlikely to permit a journey of such distance to rendezvous with any craft from Earth. They were resigned to the fact that they would never meet. However, there was this exchange and it preoccupied their whole life now. He hadn’t been home for a long time; back to her and the young ones. He smiled at a pleasant memory, but it was momentary and only one of his few fleeting thoughts he allowed himself within the all-absorbing activity surrounding contact with Earth. Contact that he, as the humble minder of the listening station, had initiated. Now he was being swept along by the waves the first message had created; his feet weren’t touching the ground; encircled by engrossed scientists and technicians inhabiting his station he managed to retain a degree of celebrity that loosely bonded him with the experts.

Now they waited for a second time, a torturously pregnant event.

‘Let me know the minute we hear anything!’ The President had woken up to the enormity of the occasion, his role in this momentous event and what it meant to the world, and in particular what it meant for him both politically and maybe, just maybe, financially. ‘I want to be kept informed at every turn,’ he commanded as he left yet another meeting of the newly named ‘Contact Group’. There was a combined sigh of relief once he had thundered out through the door. Without his hindrance they could openly plan the strategy necessary should there be a reply to their message, or even more importantly, if that message indicated an ability to travel to Earth; to actually meet.

When it came it didn’t arrive as before. Sure, Brad Sherman was there waiting, but he was way down the list of eminent personnel who claimed a front seat at one of the computer screens linked to the response laser pulse that channelled the precious exchange. Brad didn’t even have the luxury of a seat in that simmering room where he alone had been stunned by the original contact. He jostled with other minions relegated to perform more tedious tasks orchestrated by the new elite of the department. It was a room expectant and hot, and swelling with the communal will.

The cursor halted its twitching dance on every throbbing screen and began spreading liquid writing that magnetically dragged every eyeball with it in a seemingly slow appreciation of a dramatic dialogue. And as each word appeared so each word was read again and again, as if it would disappear at a stroke; they guarded and protected every syllable and rightly so, cliché it may be but they knew this was history in the making.

Whereas the initial response had been succinct to say the least, this new retort was mammoth and was received in awesome silence; no voice competed with the crooning electronics of the webbed network of computer paraphernalia, and even after this slumped to a stop no one broke the cathedral stillness; the room was a monastery and the votaries glued to their religious text, newly delivered from the heavens.

‘Mr. President! It has arrived.’ The aide enjoyed bringing good news. On too many occasions he had taken the brunt of conveying news of some disaster to his irascible boss.

The President almost bounded from behind his desk, yanked off his reading glasses and held out a demanding hand in front of him.

‘No, no I haven’t got a copy yet,’ spluttered the aide, as if being robbed by the soliciting hand thrust towards him.

‘Why not?’ The question had no hint of politeness.

‘Just got a call from Roy Palmer at GC; says it’s a long one this time; crammed with stuff about this planet and the people. It’s so exciting.’

The President trawled the ecstatic face of the aide with bewilderment. He was eager himself, but he was never going to get foolish over it; a wayward youth, scraping an education, treading on heads on the way to a fortune and the favours and fighting at every rung of the political ladder had made sure of that.

‘Get me a car, you girl!’ It seemed to the enthralled aide that even good news was greeted with some form of obnoxious response. ‘I want to get over to GC now!’ the fuming President demanded.

‘Right away, sir!’ the figure snapped, as he slid from the door and far from the frizzling man.

The ‘downsizing’ of General Communications had been a mistake. That was evident now. How they regretted the cutbacks, and those who advocated the necessity to keep it up to strength could well have been gloating had they had the time or the passion for it. The small Government block was strangely tranquillised by furious examination. There was the low murmur of delight and the leafy shuffling of papers accompanied by a slow, deliberate clicking of the input of data; and what data! Never had they reaped such treasures. As soon as the figures were entered three dimensional spheres appeared, rotating. The planet was being recreated, and every facet of the topography and atmosphere popped into place, and two arcing moons swung round, magnetically attached to the spinning globe.

The President gushed in; he entered nowhere inconspicuously or politely, and left in the same way. He thought it gave the right impression; brazen cowboy entering the saloon technique. The peripheral secret service suits felt the firm security of their firearms and watched the President and those around him, forever alert.

‘Right gentlemen, what exactly do we have now?’ He stood in the centre of the pulsing room, rubbed his hungry hands together and waited to be fed.

White coats from all corners of the thick room sashayed, paper-loaded to rendezvous with their leader, his voracious eyes blazing.

He greeted the mountain of paper with horror. ‘Don’t say I’ve got to dig through this lot!’ He read very little and some doubted he really remembered how to. ‘Give me the low-down on what’s come through, without any unnecessary bull. I want this as clear as crystal; I’m no damn scientist and you’re going to make sure I get the full picture.’ His demands were unrealistic but not unexpected. Everyone in the department knew what a pig he was; and a steaming pig with a mission was going to be hell.

They seated him in a small side office and took it in turns to deliver some fresh information about the planet; he was spoon-fed every detail, and every detail was carefully explained so that no morsel of data spilled unconsumed from his greedy eyes. And when they had finished they watched him digesting it. His eyes scanned the high corners of the room without really looking, his mouth tightened and his face creased at all the natural folding lines as he, quaintly pedestrian, retraced every aspect.

‘Bloody amazing aint it!’ he finally blurted. ‘Somewhere up there,’ he waved an elastic finger in the air, ‘where we can’t even see, is this little old planet with people on it; an Earth lost in the backwaters of space.’ He was getting a little too poetic, and why he considered our solar system to be on the highway of space and everything else shoved at the edges or out of the main theatre, was baffling. ‘But, you tell me,’ he continued, ‘neither of us has the technology to travel to meet; that’s sad. Still what we do have is indisputable evidence. This will be quite a shock to the rest of the world and even in the good old US of A they’re goin’ to be rocked off their porches. What do we do next?’ The President was feeling somewhat responsible for it all now; quite cautious about the waves this was going to make, and rightly so. Politically he wanted this to launch him but he was just wise enough to see the possibility of a tragic sinking. He looked at the serious faces surrounding him.

‘The Contact Group needs to go through this immediately. There are so many things to discuss.’ Harris Silverman, Senior Planning Officer at General Communications, led the rest. ‘Mr. President, can you be available in one hour?’ After several hours feeding the President every crumb of the freshly delivered material they were glad of an assertive voice and a clear direction.

‘Yeah, right,’ the President meekly replied; his mind elsewhere.

It was less than an hour later when they all assembled. At each place at the glistening table stood a barricading stack of paper containing the recent communication, plus the results of furious calculations and imaginative predictions. Clucking members of the Group were still fanning out papers and gasping at sheets of data when a heavy and deliberate cough brought them to order. Their eyes were still alight. Some crisp with annoyance and others pleading to be allowed to plunge back into the treasure chest.

The President bundled in, sat down with the merest wave of a hand and examined the pile in front of him, with the look of a frowning owl from above his tortoiseshell spectacles.

Seeing he was seated Harris tugged at his braces with both hands and began. ‘It’s here as you can see.’ He waved an arm over the papers in front of him. ‘The potted geography and history of another world; and it’s sitting in front of you. Did we ever believe it would happen? I don’t think we ever did. We went through the motions and hoped. I know I did! Now we have to move on. I can’t stop looking at the stuff; it’s simply more than just fascinating, and I know what you all want to do. You want to exam every little detail and exam it again, and smack your forehead to see if you are awake, to make sure for the fortieth time that you’re not dreaming. I can assure you, I think, that this isn’t a dream and that world is out there, and they are most likely slapping themselves to ensure that they too are fully conscious. Try to imagine it. Try to imagine them. Mind blowing isn’t it?’

Harris Silverman spent as little time as possible recreating the excitement and rapidly displayed on the large computer screen the detailed information about the planet, its atmosphere and people. Not that they had given a description of themselves but some boffin had managed to construct what he thought was a good interpretation of their physical appearance using gravity details, dietary data and physiological licence. And definitely the colour was pure invention. The room greeted this reconstruction with a mixture of surprise and grunts of abhorrence.

‘My God!’ the President exclaimed. ‘You guys sure of this?’ He peered over his glasses again. ‘That aint human.’ Heads shunted from the alarming screen image to the anxious facial expression of the President.

‘Well Sir, you must be aware that nothing is certain and these impressions are only initial ideas based on relatively sparse information.’ Harris was eager to play down the distasteful image.

‘Scare the livin’ daylights out of the folks here,’ the President added, still examining, with the occasional tilted head, the gruesome form on the screen. ‘They will think they’ve been invaded if any of these...’ He struggled for the right word. ‘These people.’ For once he was being diplomatic and he repeated it to reassure himself. ‘Yes, these people, if they were able to reach here, America would go crazy.’

‘I think I can safely say there is no possibility of that,’ Harris was quick to reassure the President, and others only asking the same question with their gaping mouths. ‘Let’s not get jittery over this,’ he continued, ‘everything is at a distance. We can’t get there and they can’t get here. Keep that firmly attached to any ideas you may have. We are not facing an alien invasion, that’s definitely the stuff of sci fi books and sensational films.’ Harris was flapping his hands at anonymous airborne images as he endeavoured to persuade the group that there was no danger from this contact. Not that he really knew there wasn’t, but what they didn’t need now was panic from any quarter, and the people assembled were the nerve ends of every sensitive Government agency.

There was general agreement that the representation of the inhabitants was somewhat shocking. However, Harris was able to soften this revulsion when he reminded them that they were far less appalling than the creatures depicted in some so-called knowledgeable films. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘it is merely that they have several human features and that perhaps disturbs us more, and seeing those features enlarged, shrunken or relocated is the real scary part.’

‘That’s all very well.’ The President shook his head. ‘But, it aint natural is it?’ He looked for support. A few nodded in agreement but most just shrugged and peered down at some of the papers.

‘The important decisions now have to be made.’ Harris had put the monster aspect to bed and was moving on. ‘What do we do now? When do we publicise all this, or do we tell at all? I know there is still a lot of work to be done and more answers needed but there does need to be a structured approach and some very basic stuff sorted out.’

Harris waved some clutched papers and continued, ‘This miraculous planet spins as does ours and as we now know the people there live in an atmosphere very close to our own. I try, as you must, to imagine their world.’ He bit his lip, adjusted his braces and carried on. ‘But there are the differences.’

‘What differences?’ The President was alerted. ‘You goin’t give us some real bad news, Harris?’

Holding a satisfied grin brought on by the use of his first name and his apparent control over proceedings Harris began to explain. ‘As far as we can ascertain, on this planet there are no countries and just the one language.’

‘No countries eh!’ The President thought that one through. ‘And one language; that’s strange all right.’ He felt like being flippant and making a remark about saving on translation and interpretation but he didn’t, he simply took it all in and trundled it around his head, occasionally breaking his silence with a muffled sigh or a wet smacking of his loose lips. ‘Don’t ring true this place; the people just aint human, and it aint human not to have countries, and them all speaking the same language.’ He thought on. ‘Spose it keeps ‘em peaceful like; not goin’ to invade their own country now are they?’ The President smiled at his own humour and sought other faces to see if they had lit up at his amusing comment. ‘Still if the good Lord created them and their planet who are we to question such things, eh?’ His eyes swept the room again. Looking again for an agreeing response.

A rather meek looking figure, bespectacled and hunch-shouldered rose from his chair to tackle the President’s remarks. Professor Brian Milliard knew a few things about societies, even alien ones it seemed. His chair at Michigan State University was in anthropology and he was recognised as the authority on civilisation development, social structure and the nature of its evolution. He was glad of the opportunity to speak as it seemed he would be sidelined as the Contact Group steamrollered on.

‘It would be a grave mistake to attempt to compare our planet and its amazingly intricate social fabric with that of a planet that has evolved completely detached from our own idiosyncratic pressures and chaotic history. For one I am still in a state of shock.’ Milliard removed his glasses and dabbed his shiny forehead with a handkerchief while he recaptured his composure. ‘We may well never be the same again. This planet could demonstrate and highlight many of the fallacies of our own and, Mr. President, you have stimulated some of the raw nerve-ends that are likely to be the most difficult to tackle.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Are they human and did the good Lord create them, is a good starting point. The answers are probably no and no.’

He waited for the explosion. The fuse had been lit and there was a definite hissing of the galloping flame. They nearly all wanted to speak but felt they had better let the President start. It took a few minutes for his lips to come together and his jaw to resume its sculptured position.

‘No, they are not human and no they were not created by God?’

‘Most probably, Sir.’

‘You some kind of heathen, man?’ The President’s rapier finger jabbed out in the Professor’s direction. ‘You trying to tell me, and these good folks here, that them people aint good Christian boys and girls?’ He was red-necked and bouncing.

‘Hardly.’ Brian Milliard grinned grimly and searched the long table for a sympathetic face. ‘Surely you don’t expect these people to have recreated your same religions; you don’t expect them to have massaged a replica God from their growing up, for them to have had their own Jesus or a visit from ours?’ He shook his head at the blank faces. ‘And I thought I was old and gullible.’

The President remained agitated and examined the faces around him, and saw their eyes disown him. ‘Now then,’ he began, unsure of the next words. ‘This here, yes, this here, is downright blasphemy and you know it Professor. You are talking some downright subversive nonsense and we aint having any of it; right?’ Again the table-fixed eyes deserted him.

Brian Hilliard leaned as near to the table as he could and tried to get as close to the President as the table allowed him. ‘You would be mistaken to imagine that this quite separate civilisation has been feeble enough to bow down to the same fears and raked by such primitive insecurities as our own, and that in a desperate and naive period, when their spirit was at a low ebb resorted to placing the enormity of planet creation in the lap of this great spiritual presence. Even I despair at the disservice such a belief does to nature and the incredible quick-fix explanation that everyone adheres to. We perpetuate this dumb idea because we are the products of the greatest conditioning system ever devised. And it’s about time we realised it.’

‘You watch what you’re saying fella. I aint certain you aint trying to undermine this country by that sort o’ talk.’ The President was talking from a barricade and a lot of what the professor was saying was spilling over his head.

‘Hear me out!’ Brian Hilliard had waited a long time to express this, and at this level. He wasn’t going to stop without his final opinion. ‘The conditioning system of which I speak is of course that of parent over child and of teacher over class and of the state over us all. The only way this belief survives; this ridiculous transparent Santa Claus folklore, is through parents unintentionally indoctrinating children. Even I have to struggle to fight off those old fears that my mother and father innocently, in my most receptive years, engraved on my development.’ He drew breath. ‘Yes, they haunt me...and worst of all, my friends, they are now woven watertight with every paraphernalia and ritual that it would be impossible to disassemble.’ Hilliard was giving his pocket philosophy lesson now.

‘When all this began there were very few people on our planet, and hardly any learned ones. They were so ignorant of the nature of their environment that even night time was to be feared. First they had their numerous gods and in time these were refined down to the one - but still the same mentality prevailed. It is too late, sadly, for us to look rationally at this...far too late.’ Hilliard appeared to sink a little in resignation. ‘But don’t expect this other world, this other planet of other people to have created you same God and to have swallowed such a blatant falsehood.’

Confounded and silenced, the room barely breathed.

‘Now look here, we have to tread damn carefully, this is a spiky subject all right.’ A pompous military uniform stuck out and spoke awkwardly from behind a hand that was intercepting a punctuating suppressed cough. Major General David Stein was old school. His previous peace envoy roles had spiked him in to action.

Harris Silverman could see everything going pear shaped. He stood up and tried to pull together the group which had deteriorated into rows of leaning suits, strangled utterances and a volley of shrugs. ‘Yes, yes...we have definite ideas on how our world was created; mine stronger than most.’ He was beginning to receive attention. ‘I think I speak for us all when I say I believe God was responsible for the creation of our amazing planet.’ He spoke the words quickly as if embarrassed by having to tackle the subject. His eyes watched the ceiling, perhaps trying to reassure the omnipresence examining his every move and alerted by the reference to his name. ‘But,’ he stumbled on, ‘we do have to consider the implications raised by Professor Hilliard. If God did create this other planet, did create all their wonders, did create the hideous inhabitants, then...’ Harris watched the floor ‘...then there are many things we haven’t sorted out. This could well be a hornets nest my friends.’

‘Shit! Just when things were getting simple we trip over this goddam brick.’ The President stamped hard on the floor.

Brian Hilliard remained standing and clutched his papers firmly. He waited for most of the simmering to cease and then spoke again. He was like a magical potion salesman as he searched for likely customers for his ideas, and he leered at all the eyes that stuck to his electric words. ‘No countries, no foreign languages, no capital cities, little government, little illness and a life span well exceeding our own. Just a few things in a living museum. It is not possible for any of us to comprehend some of the facts that this latest message has hurled; a phenomenal meteorite. I’m afraid we have to dismantle all the taboos and rethink an awful lot of what is now in place here. We have something to compare with our own precious, cosy world and there are going to be some major casualties.’

Hilliard certainly knew how to kill euphoria. The Contact Group were weary and disappointed and the President a subdued and resigned figure. Eventually he spoke; first with his eyes and then his mouth slid in with heavy words laden with secrecy. ‘We keep the lid on all this. We keep it airtight; until we know some more, before we blow all of this sky-high.’ He twirled his snaking arm to figuratively encircle the world, or at least his. ‘Before we detonate a bloody cultural nuclear device, we need to get the full picture. I don’t like what the professor is telling me, don’t like this planet or the people. It aint right.’ Xenophobia had set in and the doors were shutting tight on this contact.

Harris picked up the President’s point. ‘What more do we need to know? Surely there’s enough already to jemmy open our whole planet!’

‘We need to tell them some more; need to explain our beliefs, our traditions, our systems and our good oldfashioned ways. Then we can see their response. Perhaps they haven’t given it all much thought. Perhaps they are quite primitive at the moment in their beliefs and we can assist them to understand; sort of missionaries across space.’ The President loved that. What an idea, the President of the United States an inter-galactic missionary converting the heathen hordes who had been living without our worldly knowledge light years away. He could feel the votes already. A second term was a certainty.

The secure and gingerly approach was agreed by all the flagging hands at the jaded meeting, and along with other relevant data and prying enquiries the President was to explain the prevalent social conformities and religious beliefs of his people. Sure he would mention some of the other religions but he knew who created his world and the identity of His son who was saving him from sin and he was sure to let this far-off planet know his truth.

They had waited at the listening station, paradoxically like monks. There was an unspoken dedication to this enterprise, and during the periods of inactivity they had spoken in gracious tones of the planet Earth, of the people and the atmosphere, of its single moon and its sun, of its greenness and its gravity; but theirs was an admiration and a wonder. There was no shock and no criticism, and no pointing and no ridicule. This was their way.

And whilst they fumbled around in the clutter of the station the next communication clicked in, and began to splutter out its spitting data. To a casual observer with earthly notions it would have seemed the movement of a disinterested party, but physically they could only manage a trundling gait even at a time of greatest fascination. But such elephantine movement was compensated by the security of knowing that that would be how they always moved; even towards their death, and yes they did die, they never experienced the tragic decay of their bodies, the crippling diseases, the deterioration beyond recognition, the slowing down to a halt and the degradation of senility. Slugs they may have seemed but they would remain the same slugs with the same faculties right to the end.

At the recording point they stood and hummed appreciation at the amount of information screaming into the system and there was a hunger for these data delicacies. And for such a long time the machinery ate the shovelled material and they waited eagerly for it to terminate so that they could feed it through the translation programme and wallow in the news from Earth.

They were now used to the pudding sounds of the language and it no longer caused them distress, but there was still a sense of relief when the custard whisper ceased. To them it was a scramble when they hurried the recording into the system and waited for their words to spin out exhilarating from the dull dough that they had listened to from the sticky mouths of Earth. Their eyes met as Earth undid its buttons and exposed some of the rules by which it was bound; strange and unnecessary rites not needed by them. However, the interest was immense and they bathed in all the new facts that were pouring from the translation. No one stirred or broke the polite silence, and they were courteous enough to refrain from something approaching mirth when the President explained how he believed his planet was created. It was a quaint idea and simplified everything. There was no need for all the long and tedious scientific research and the careful investigation over mountains of time. It just happened in a miraculous flash. Wonderful! Some of them bit hard on their plastic lips and held back the nearest thing they could muster to a chuckle. But this was quickly and dramatically broken by what followed. The President told his new friends across space about his, and his countrymen’s adulation for their God and how this was demonstrated by following a religion. It provided rules and laws for living and was essential for good order. There followed nothing more than an advertisement for Southern Baptist fellowships.

They heard nothing after that. The glint in the corner of the eye turned black and sickly and the pink radiation and glow turned purple death and they became brittle and beaten; it was the fateful words that had struck them down and they whimpered their disappointment. He read all their minds. From the small light portals in the station they could make out the highland in each direction. There had been no interest to spy from these apertures when there were the delights of the messages soaring through space, and the cocooned camaraderie that had held them oblivious to the opportunities of their own planet. But now they looked. They were blown from their course and faltering casualties of a stricken dream.

Outside was a broken landscape, pitted and riddled with scattered wrecks of dwellings. Only in the settlement was there now sanity. But from their suffering they had now strangled all the lies and were building on new enlightenment, and burying the moribund ideas and beastly superstitions. On the far horizon in one direction the tipped jig-saw of a large structure smudged the hillside. Only the metal moon’s platinum glow struck and lit a huge toppled O that appeared to have once sat emblazoned on the now dismantled monument. And all around the scorched remains the slopes were peppered with neat mounds, and each mound was pinned by a guardian stone, and on each stone was etched the O symbol, and beside the symbol was testament to a fallen person.

Immediately across the scooped valley and occupying the opposite horizon the giant wall of a similarly fallen building, once a mighty construction, lay flattened, and those other walls that had relied on its immense strength had collapsed in despair about it. Darkened by the lunar shadows but picking up sparks of light from settlement flares a flaming Z made of some anonymous metal slept beside the toppled bulwark, and it too was an emblem now thrown to the ground. Long barrows snaked down the incline, and like centipede legs craggy stakes plotted the fate of those who lay beneath, and each stake was heavily crested with the flaming Z and the crude identity of the one who rotted below.

And when their eyes turned on each other they bled with the foul history of their planet. It was a time for touching; a rare occurrence. They played it all back in the pressing of limbs and the swaying of their swollen heads and the welling of their eyes. There had been prophets here too. Prophets with massaging voices and compelling messages and promises that could tilt their lives in the direction of the truth. On hilltops and at great meetings the empty were filled with hope and the feeble made strong by their new faith; a blinding and a rigid faith that knew no elasticity; carved in stone. Prophets often start their journeys alone, but there is never the one, never the solitary soothsayer at a time of need. The ideas turned into guiding codes, the codes into principles and the principles into unyielding laws. And never the solitary set of unyielding laws. The planet was plunged into a volcano of conflict and for their faith they killed, and for their faith they died; dreadful, monstrous deaths done by the monstrous faithful. But it wasn’t just the blinded disciples. The hillsides with their tumbled temples and their massive cairns cradled daintily fenced rectangles where tangled ideals and blinkered belief had entrapped and slaughtered the young. Flowers grew there, quite unlike the flowers of Earth; wild and threading, stained-glass, kaleidoscope colours that twinkled with the same sparkle of childhood that the battling ideologies had put to the sword in scything doctrine anger.

‘Never, ever, again’ was manifested in the watering eyes and the tight clasping of each other.

Unanimous yet unspoken they decided.

They stole themselves apart and grappled with the impedimenta of their long stay. It was over. The equipment, that had funnelled into the listening station for the story of a whole new world turning and living in the otherwise dark mire of space and which had flung back an eager response, was packed and packaged and prised from the cluttered cabled network. It was left to him to switch off the power source and drag the moaning, ill-fitting door closed; and walk with only a summary glance at the building that had once been his sanctuary and had later become a shrine. He clambered aboard his vehicle and moved downhill. Being the last to leave he could see the lights of the others as they scrambled towards the settlement and the rest of their bland lives. It was going to be difficult reconciling his long absence when he met her at the dwelling and he hoped the young ones, probably at the doorway clinging to her plump body, would be pleased he had returned. This was one consoling thought to hold on to. He felt miserable, like them all; such an adventure to pull the plug on! Yet the compelling reason swamped everything and suffocated the incredible dialogue with the strange and remarkable planet Earth. But his knowledge lived on and he knew he could still visit that.

At General Communications the audience was screen struck and the room heaving with the imprisoned participants at the Earth end of this extraordinary inter-galactic exchange. There hadn’t been much sleep since the most recent response and expectation hung thick in the air; almost touchable matter.

It was difficult to determine when the doubt first set in, and probably grew like a slow cancer; a seeping disillusionment rather than arriving as a distinct and sudden realisation that, like a spurned lover the lavish overtures were not going to be reciprocated.

Roy Palmer galloped incessantly between G.C. headquarters and the White House, between the static room and the twitching President. The President was unsure about the lack of activity; on one hand he was reluctant to have to inform the nation and the world about the alien planet and its enigmatic inhabitants, and on the other disappointed that no response would kill any political capital he might have hoped to have gained from his role in the affair.

With the reception computers dormant for many months and the morale of the G.C. staff deflated from the once zealous to downright complacent, Harris Silverman knew it was necessary to call together the Contact Group. This time they shuffled into the Oval Office. There were no reams of paper to scrabble through, no ground-breaking information, no new initiatives, no motivation. They were there to discuss the distinct lack of such stuff.

‘Different mood today,’ Silverman opened, ‘none of that electricity we’ve had in the past.’ He scratched his ruby neck, the lumpy bit where the stiff collar was pushing up as he spoke. ‘Seems something’s gone wrong; there’s been no word. We’ve tried contacting them several times, and nothing. My boys on the technical side say there’s nothing wrong our end and from our readings the planet hasn’t changed in any way to indicate a problem there. Even our transmission avenue through the black hole is wide open.’ He scratched his head and other parts. ‘I’m personally at a loss as to what’s happened.’

The President sat keeping his head down. Although he was somewhat more at ease without the constraining documentation to tackle he was troubled by the absence of contact. ‘We go back to code green and wrap this lot up. I don’t want any leaks. We can’t go open on any of this; we could shoot ourselves in the foot.’ By this he meant himself. He was quick to cover his tracks. There was no way he was going public and having to answer any awkward stuff; it could have been a feather in his cap but now there was the possibility it would topple him. He wouldn’t risk that.

‘You sure on that? Harris queried. ‘There’s an awful lot of information and some amazing material locked away in those computers. I personally would be pig sick to think we’re restricting this.’

‘We damn well are. I aint having people getting fucking scared shitless for no reason. Keep it from them and keep them safe. They’re a panicky lot and I want stability.’ The President had thought this through and seen the dangers to himself, his campaign and his second term. ‘The curtain falls now, and it’s a concrete one! I want this locked away and sealed shut; no fucking leaks!’ He stood to leave. There was nothing left to discuss. He’d shot it dead, and the rest of the Contact Group just bodies after a mass beheading.

Despite a further downsizing and downgrading General Communications was left intact, and the atmosphere of a hopeful yet hopeless fishing trip resumed. Brad Sherman survived the cuts in budget and with all the glory seekers looking elsewhere for sensational events he was left to guard the filing cabinet and discuss football with empty desks or solitary cleaners. But every now and then he would spin round to ensure he wasn’t caught napping again and that there weren’t any cryptic messages creeping onto a soliciting screen, courtesy of a responding extra-terrestrial.

And...

...deep into the empty auditorium of spreading space the echoes of the enticing, lost and lonely message from Earth rattled impotent amongst the dead and twirling rocks, and the one and only other living planet now turned deaf...

...hello, hello, hello...