Uninvited Guests

Text from Story Wars
CC-BY

Chapter 1 by Windlion
She stared at the output again. Too much time up here, she thought, working on the Moon makes Janey go looney.

Then she opened a chat window.

lunalab3:chatlink>CONNECT RQ 23 MARCH 2064 ENTER ID

lunalab3:chatlink< ucnasa3325

lunalab3:chatlink>CONNECT AUTH WELCOME JANELLE

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> call ucnasa29933

lunalab3:chatlink>CALLING ....... CALLING ...... CONNECTED UCNASA29933 LARS

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> Lars sry to bother

saganlab:ucnasa29933> Np Janey hows the weather professor

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> great 110 deg K clear skies zero pollution

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> no beancounters

saganlab:ucnasa29933> wish i could say same here! wassup

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> waste your time, should not even bother, but ASETI is squealing

saganlab:ucnasa29933> songs of little green men again?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> after media crap last time i am not going to talk to anyone without a PhD

saganlab:ucnasa29933> gah. agreed. so u are talking to me, i am nobody?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> no cutie u are my PhD. lets go private and bitch about beancounters

lunalab3:ucnasa33235> ENCRYPTION REQUEST

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ ENCRYPT KEY EXCHANGED

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ thx again sry to dump on u

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ dump away beautiful just u and me listening

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ so, ASETI … stupid software doing a very hard sell

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ ?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ i dont wanna say this

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ i think its real this time

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ why?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ video

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ oshit

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ thin reedy looking humanoid. could be fx

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ text asking talk to scientists only

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ hoax, grad students again

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ yeah, could be xcpt they all left two weeks ago

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ hack?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ hack could be

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ got a source track?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ planetary

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ has to be a hack. mars?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ u got it in one. signal dips on deimos and phobos orb periods

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ pretty detaled hack.

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ and video background looks like coprates chasm

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ srs hack!

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ uh. dont think so. gut feeling

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ youve got a pretty smart gut

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ my gut is missing you

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ okay what can i do

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ just look it over tell me its not for real

saganlab:ucnasa29933⎆ what if it is?

lunalab3:ucnasa33235⎆ dont tell anyone just get on the next shuttle and come hold me baby pls cuz i just met the martians

Chapter 2 by Windlion
I can’t let myself think about what I’m doing. I would lose it.

“Here it is, just when they said it would get here.” Lars, his voice on the radio sounds so different. Wish he was going along. Damn you, multiple sclerosis, for keeping my main squeeze Earthbound.

I looked at the squat round-nosed cylinder. Space taxi. Just like the Imstoshai advertised. Free round trip, all inclusive cruise, but BYOB.

“Suits checked. Go bags ready.” Who was that? Oh, right. That was me talking. Contact team leader. Scared out of my f’ing mind team leader, pretending brave so the others don’t back out.

“No radiation. How do they do that? Door is opening, lift coming down.” Lars, watching from 400 thousand klicks away.

“Okay, gang, let’s roll!”

Tyrone. Quantum physics.

Guan Ting. Linguistics.

Abhilasha. Topology and functional analysis.

Yuri. Relativistic mechanics.

Ástríđur. Geoscience.

Byeong Ho. Genetics.

David. Biochemistry.

Janelle. Astrophysics. Me.

Extraterrestrial intelligence researcher me. First Contact me. Team leader me. Little nobody Detroit chit me.

Why me?

The lift hardly seems strong enough, but it carries us up to the door. One at a time.

Guan Ting goes first, then Tyrone. The storage boxes with our supplies next. Then Yuri, Abhilasa, Ástríđur. Byeong Ho, David.

I board last. “One small step,” I mutter, and shuffle onto the lift platform.

We find our seats, secure ourselves with the straps, and wait.

The hatch closes on its own. A subdued thundering noise, and our bodies press down against the couches.

Point eight gee, uncomfortable after a couple of weeks on the Moon. One point six will be even less comfortable, but we can tolerate it for the three week trip.

On our way to Mars. To meet the Martians. Don’t tell anyone. No one. Absolutely no one.

Please don’t even tell us.

Because we know this is big. Bigger than Neil Armstrong, bigger than Yuri Gagarin, bigger than Ferdinand Magellan, bigger than those nomads that left Africa to discover the world back before we humans had history.

Scared? Me? Damn straight, sister.

Chapter 3 by Windlion
Wild Card: The Imstoshai welcome the team to a sealed lava tube they have built with Earth like atmosphere

"Good morning, everyone!"

They love me so, playing "rooster" for our little group. Baleful stares from the ones who have climbed out of their tents, frantic scurrying sounds from the ones still inside them.

Well, somebody's got to do it. Too easy to let time slip away, living in this cozy tube of shiny stone, and we only get 30 days … sols, on Mars it's sols, a whole extra 35 minutes longer! We need all those minutes, and more.

Ah, here they are, the silver forest moving down the tube towards us. So strange, so beautiful, so quiet! We have consciously been adjusting to their rhythms, the long silences, the sudden transformations. My guess is that they have been adjusting to us as well.

Yuri hands me a cup of tea, with a flirty wink. He approves of the way I run the show and I really appreciate how much he does. We're cool.

"Our hosts are here, gentles! Look lively, get your tablets, it's tree talk time!" One tent still shaking, Tyrone again. Mental note, words later for the young man.

I finish the cup, tuck it away in my bag, draw a deep breath. I am First Contact. I am humanity, representing us all to this astonishing, amazing, wonderful people who call themselves Imstoshai.

It doesn't matter which of the tall willows I approach, they move personalities from tree to tree faster than we change clothes. That took a while for both sides to understand! Something between groupmind and telepathy, David and Guan Ting have spirited debates about it almost every day.

Sol. Not day. My Five and the kids are living another day, back on Earth. I miss them. I wish, oh, I wish I could share this with Lars.

Me, I am living another sol. I am … I have to not think about it too much, or I just stand around with a dumb grin on my face.

Okay, ritual time. Step up, put my hands together, bow, and chant. "Imstoshai. we greet you! I am the Terran called Janey …" On with the introductions, every member of the team, at the start of every sol. They have trouble seeing us as individuals.

All of the trees fold two branches together and lean forward slightly. The one closest to me uses a reedlike instrument to sing a response that doesn't have words as much as emotions.

When their greeting song is finished, we separate into small circles, each with one Terran scientist and two to five of the Imstoshai. Sometimes the hours crawl by with almost no conversation at all. Sometimes so much becomes obvious we burst out laughing, or even crying at how much we have learned in two crucial sentences.

They are very, very far ahead of us, and not just in technology.

We frighten them. We move too fast, we are too careless of others. The Wiccans are going to love these guys; they are seriously into not doing harm to any life, and our behavior … well. Yeah. Humanity, pretty gaddam inhumane sometimes.

The terraforming project, that was a scary moment when they realized that we couldn't just tell the Mars Inc earthrapers to take their reactors, back off Mars and go away! The Imstoshai even offered to get rid of them for us, no biggie.

"Get rid of" three thorium reactor plants? Not a problem? That was even more scary.

We had a long debate on our side about the whole secrecy thing after that went down, but the trees came back the next day and asked that we stay with the current plan. Whew.

They love our music!

Guan Ting and Abhilasha brought their recorders along and have been doing, well, recitals? at the end of our day, and more of the Imstoshai show up for that than for all our chatter about the eleven dimensions, quantum gravity quintessence, atonal rhythmic subharmonics, and …

Yeah, dumb grin frozen staring into nowhere me …The, oh wow, fifteen! Fifteen other intelligent species they have contacted … and there's more, so much more! I am going to be writing papers for the rest of my life, and everyone else in the trade will curse their bad luck at not being me for all time.

I find myself wondering, can we get some scientists in the next team who can sing and dance? The Imstoshai might like that.

Chapter 4 by Windlion
It is so hard to pack up and go — home? Back to Earth, anyhow.

Sixty sols — Mars days — ago, I was somebody important, tops in my discipline, brilliant astrophysicist, leading the pack, role model for all the girls who think there's nothing to life but keeping some guy's attention, yada yada …

Shit, girl. I was nothing then. Now? Walking, listening, conversating with the maybe a hundred thousand years old Imstoshai, can't even tell us the answers cuz we don't know enough to ask the questions?

I am still nothing.

Except, they like me. They do! When I told them it was time for me to go back to Earth, that the other scientists would keep the talks going, that I had to spend time with the children we are raising?

They went silent, got up and left.

Which is bad, the last time the Imstoshai did that was when we started talking to them about the terraforming project.

Macbeth Birnam Woods kind of feeling, seeing all of these beings that look like silver-leaf trees suddenly turn away together and leave.

We're getting used to them. The Imstoshai all seem to act as one, and they are very, very deliberate. They say they have been aware that we would be arriving for over a century and only recently decided that they should welcome us.

That's a good thing for us. I'd rather not think of what they would have done if they didn't want us around. Pretty scary tech.

Gotta wake up the government, put a choke hold on Mars Inc before they push the Imstoshai too far. Colonization of Mars — not gonna happen, period.

Archie says that is going to be a brutal hard sell, that Mars Inc owns our so-called elected reps. He had some other words for Mars Inc, ugly ones.

You'd think a Detroit chit would have caught on to how bad things were getting! Lost in my own little bubble, I guess. Maybe I can do something when I get back.

I was afraid the Imstoshai might not want me to leave, that it might take another hundred years for them to decide?

But the family angle worked, raising kids is big for them, too. Sign of civilization, eh, how much effort goes into the next generation?

Some of the trees came to find me — me, personally! — and one of the Elders spoke to me, explained that the Imstoshai would accept my absence to see my kids, would work with the other scientists for now, but that they would always be asking for my return.

Hell, yes! Lars, the kids, yeah, I need to get with them, but I know that one day later I'll be looking up in the sky for a little red planet. I'll be back as soon as I can.

Hey, Detroit! They're calling a child of your streets the First Contact. Are you impressed?

I'm not. Here