Author: A J Paige

They’d vandalised the sign again. Who would’ve thought that the Goddard Space Flight Center could prove such an unfortunate choice of name?
Mary dropped her gaze and waved at the placard-holding protesters as the guard beckoned her in through the reinforced gate. A small boy waved back.
“Release the files!” yelled the woman standing next to him.
The boy stopped waving, and Mary sighed, trying not to quicken her step as the jeers chased after her.
Arriving at her office, she found Jordan already in, sitting at his desk across from hers and sipping from his tea-stained mug. He looked up on hearing the door and smiled.
“Welcome to the God Center,” he said, spreading his arms like a circus impresario.
“You saw the sign then,” she replied, sloughing off her bag and collapsing into her chair, kicking out at the desk to prevent a clumsy over-rotation. “What’s that, the third time they’ve managed it?”
“Yeah, I thought moving it up high would put them off, but they sure are committed.”
“What do you expect from religious zealots?”
Jordan pulled a face, but tried to swivel away without commenting. Mary wasn’t having it.
“Oh what? Think they’re right about it do you? Think I’ve not noticed how you refuse to criticize them?”
Jordan spun back slowly, a picture of strained self-control.
“Neither they, nor I, nor you know what it is. And I don’t think getting angry about it does us any good.”
Mary held her breath and anger tight for a moment, and then let them go.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep.”
“It’s no problem. Here, I put the coffee pot on for you when I got in. I’ll go get you some.”
She tried to find the words to waylay his kindness, but he was already out the door. The mental failing bothered her, but she tried to push it aside as she clicked her computer out of standby and tapped in her password.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought to herself while her overloaded desktop creaked into life. It was supposed to be so very neat and tidy. Hubble would take its photos, she and her team would analyse them, and it would all end nicely with humanity gaining an improved understanding of galaxy formation. That was how it was supposed to go, neat and tidy. Instead they had got wild and unexplainable images, inevitable leaks to the press, and now the full-blown chaos of a world clamouring for answers or screaming out their own.
Jordan re-entered and set the coffee in front of her.
“Thanks. Oh, and did you try deriving the motion of that hand thing using the dark matter distribution I sent?”
“Didn’t work,” said Jordan, already back at his desk.
Mary shrugged this off, and clicked to open the latest images downloaded over night. They would just have to try something else. There had to be a rational explanation; they just hadn’t found it yet. Galaxies simply did not form by — “Oh for crying out loud!”
“What? What is it?” Jordan asked, rushing over in alarm.
“Look! Just look at that,” she yelled, jabbing an accusing finger at the line of time-stamped images.
Jordan shook his head, but his eyes didn’t once look away.
“Well?”she asked.
“Well what?”
“What do you think it looks like?”
“You know damn well what it looks like,” he said, running his hand through his hair as he stalked back over to his desk. “It looks like God is winking at us.”