Author: David Barber

This was after the calendar was changed, sometime in the binary centuries, when space exploration became popular once more, flitting from star to star in the blink of an eye.

The acausal drive itself was fashioned by silicon, though the rest of the craft was more crudely put together with human technology. Still, it was crewed by humans, and whether this was to encourage us or use us as crash test dummies, depended on your politics.

Astonishingly, the very first sun was circled by a habitable world, and it seemed there was hardware in orbit. A technological civilisation!

Shelmerdine had hurried to the observation module as soon as his shift in Life Support was over, only to find an Alt standing at one of the portholes. The Altered on board kept to themselves, except for this one, called Axe. It was said she was the least able of them and relegated to liaising with us.

His sidelong glance took in the surgical scarring, the outsize skull and embedded augments. Alts desperately chased after silicon, though AI no longer used silicon as a substrate. Meant to be offensive, the word was worn smooth by use.

His instinct was to come back later when she was gone, but even as he hesitated, the water world rotated into view beneath them.

“Obviously it wasn’t luck,” he muttered after a while. “You already knew it was here.”

Axe seemed not to hear, then sighed, still human in that at least.

“They beamed radio signals to many stars. Earth was targeted once, millennia ago. We know this because the acausal engine lets you look back in time. Just flit to a sufficient distance and wait for the wavefront to arrive.”

He could not help himself, though it meant succumbing to the sin of begging for answers, of soliciting a handout from those cleverer than us.

“The signal,” he began. “What did it—”

“We think the broadcasts were songs.”

Conversation with old humans was so ponderously slow. Few Alts had the patience.

“Songs?”

She shrugged. “They were an aquatic species. Imagine how difficult it must have been to develop technology on a water world; to put vast radio arrays into orbit. Eventually they gave up the struggle.”

Waiting for the man to ask, Axe mused upon the descendants of that species still roaming the oceans, their technological civilisation lost beyond memory.

Red giants had swelled and pulsars wound down as they sang their songs on the hydrogen line. Did they spend Ages waiting for an answer, until futility tainted their ancient lives? Was this the old Fermi Paradox?

“What happened to them?”

“You might look into that.”

“Busywork for us. I bet you already know.”

Some Alt factions said showing humans this world was a waste of time, though Axe had disagreed. Humans hardly did any research now; what was the point? All this new science was beyond them and they knew it. Easier just to submit a request to silicon for answers.

Shelmerdine turned back to the planet, watching white clouds drift across the glittering blue ocean.

He imagined a signal arriving when humankind was still in charge on Earth, in the time of the Buddha perhaps, or when iron and woad were popular in Europe and the I Ching perplexed the courts of the Dragon Throne, the signal like a phone ringing in an empty house.

We could have saved them. They might have saved us. Timing is all.