Scheduled after the overall briefing, or welcoming speeches, was... another briefing. Truly, people in the government did like to talk. Dr. Zanna was just hoping that this one would be meatier, with more specifics and less vagaries of language.

  The briefing or conference room was large, but plain, and every piece of furniture and equipment from the office chairs and the conference table to the projector looked brand new, untouched even. The newness gave the place an unfinished look. The gray tone of the walls and table made it plain and the navy blue carpet and black chairs didn’t liven it up any. Flags in the corners were the only items giving the place any life at all. American and Air Force flags in the front corners and Army in the back. When General Dawson entered by the door opposite the one Dr. Zanna had used she was glad of another presence, just to move the air around a bit. He was talking amiably with one of the people who’d been on stage during the overall briefing. Major… something. Usually she was good with names, but there had been a lot of information to take in and names frankly paled in comparison to the other revelations. Dr. Zanna took a seat about midway down the table, she wanted to be able to see everyone she’d be working, and hopefully not dying, alongside. General Dawson nodded to her and stood and continued to chat with the Major. When the Major turned and nodded towards her she saw from his army uniform that his surname was Sykes. From the sheaf of papers she’d received during the main briefing she knew he would be the Major of her team. That was probably going to get confusing at some point, multiple usages of Major, but was hardly a pressing concern at present.

  Shortly after that two more people entered the room. One was a blond woman, Air Force Lt. Brennan and another man from the army, she couldn’t see his rank, but his name was Johnston, that would be specialist Adam Johnston according to her pamphlet. The woman had a bounce in her step and a pixie haircut and stood behind a seat between Major Sykes and Dr. Zanna. The man gave Dr. Zanna pause. While she had seen people with dead soulless eyes before she’d never had to work such a person for more than a couple days and then at a distance. She noticed that even though he’d chosen a seat across the table from Lt. Brennan she still angled her body slightly away from him. He didn’t seem to notice, or care, that he was alone on his side of the table.

  Once everyone had selected a chair General Dawson sat and all the uniforms followed suit. He gave the room a moment to settle, then cleared his throat and addressed the group, “Good morning everyone, welcome to the Cealium Project.”

  A chorus of ‘good mornings’ followed.

  He folded his hands and sat back in the chair. “As you may have surmised these missions are not going to be typical. There is no set and tested playbook for what we are endeavoring to do here and we cannot possibly anticipate every obstacle we’ll encounter.” There were small gestures of consensus all around. “To try and prepare for the unknown we are pooling teams of people from various backgrounds and disciplines.

  Major Sykes here,” he gestured towards the Major with an open hand “is from the army and has an exemplary service record.” Sykes dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Lt. Brennan is from the air force and has a PhD in astrophysics. She also has an excellent service record.” Lt. Brennan smiled brightly, then sombered. “Dr. Zanna has PhD’s in anthropology and communications and has been a force for peace in the world.”

  Dr. Zanna felt the beginnings of a blush as she accepted the praise. In diplomacy the success stories rarely garnered acclaim. Success mostly meant nothing happened and many people find it hard to get excited about that. General Dawson turned to the other side of the table and made the same gesture towards Johnston, but Dr. Zanna noted, his hand did not extend out quite as far, he wasn’t as sure about this one. “This is Specialist Johnston, he’s a great man to have in a tight spot.” Johnston nodded a degree or two, but his eyes continued tracking back and forth, appraising the environment.

  General Dawson began, “Ladies and gentleman I know there’s a lot to discuss. I-”

  “May I, General?” Sykes interrupted, tone gracious.

  “By all means, Major.” The General’s tone was equally gracious as he waved Sykes on.

  “Team, we’ll be walking through a device built eons ago by who knows what and we’ll emerge on the other side of it light years across the galaxy.” Sykes looked very pleased and he leaned forward as he spoke, as though eager to let the group in on a long held secret.

  Lt. Brennan’s mouth fell open and Dr. Zanna saw little starbursts in her eyes as questions were born and passed over for other questions. Paying attention to that was probably the only thing keeping Dr. Zanna from doing the same. General Dawson gave a brief indulgent smile to Sykes. The moment of quiet passed and questions spewed forth,

  “But how-?” from Brennan.

  “How old-?” started Dr. Zanna

  “Made by what?” Johnston asked in a deep voice.

  “Is it tested?” Brennan asked.

  “Where’d the device-?” Dr. Zanna managed to get out.

  And finally, “Quantum mechanics says-” Lt. Brennan again.

  “Woah, woah!” Sykes called for silence. “The General and I will answer what we can. We don’t have all the answers, and to get some of those answers we’ll need you.” The team waited with bated breath, all leaning forward. Dr. Zanna thought they might pounce soon, superior officers or not, if they didn’t get fed some information in the next few seconds.

  Evidently Sykes felt the same way because he spoke quickly, “We don’t know who built the device, or when. We do know it’s at least a million years old, but it contains compounds we’ve never seen and have had difficulty analyzing so far.” Brennan’s face was growing red as she actually held her breath to keep the queries in.

  “We also don’t fully understand how it works. We-”

  Unable to contain them any longer words shot out of Brennan with a velocity and clarity that would make a speed rapper proud, “Sir, are we talking about an Einstein-Rosen bridge being created? Because primordial wormholes are predicted to be very small, like, ten times 1 to the negative thirty third power in centimeters small, give or take for universal expansion. But that’s a theory on a theory, we have no idea if they would have expanded with the universe. And even if one is a lot bigger we’re still never getting through it. And what about stability anyway? Do the materials have a robust negative energy density? Exotic matter, obviously. Dark matter wouldn’t cut it.” She chuckled for a moment, but as the rest of the room was conversationally adrift the floor remained hers. “Sir, will we need space suits for these missions? Because we’ve only theoretically observed the right type of exotic matter, per quantum field theory in vacuum states.” She looked to Sykes expectantly.

  “Well. I think I can tell you with a high degree of confidence, that we do not have the complete answers to any of those questions yet.” Sykes pressed his lips together and nodded.

  “Actually, we do know that the device uses some of that exotic matter. I imagine you’ll want to talk to some of the physicists who will be staying and studying the device earthside for more details. Also, we will not be needing space suits just yet, though biohazard suits will be on hand.” Dawson then returned the floor to Sykes with a gesture and a nod.

  “Right, so here’s more on what we do know. We know that there are extraterrestrials, or aliens, out there. We know this because one of them had a rough landing in Texas a couple months ago. And before you ask, no, the alien is no longer with us and the ship itself was destroyed in the landing.” Sykes looked rather dubious about this last part and Dr. Zanna filed it away for later thought. “The alien brought the device over from Mars, where apparently it had been sitting in a cavern for, oh, a millennium at least.” He glanced around the team, giving them a moment to reign in their thoughts.

  This was a lot to take in, a lot of things moved from theoretical concerns to practical ones. It was alright to consider the possibilities of opening communications with an alien species that evolved on a different world, with different environmental factors, but now she’d need to actually do it. Would such a thing even be possible? Things that humanity took to be universal such as numbers and chemicals might be experienced so differently by another species as to make communication unachievable. Major Sykes caught her eye and she jerked her mind back into focus.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Another thing we were able to obtain from the… ship’s system is a database, or list, of coordinates. We’ve sent probes to five of them thus far. In a few hours we’ll be visiting one.” He paused, letting that sink in.

  Relieved that this other species had coordinate mapping systems, which meant they had math and observed at least three dimensions similarly to how humans did Dr. Zanna started to strategize on how she could talk to these entities, but wasn’t able to get very far in her musings before Lt. Brennan asked,

  “Does this coordinate system map to an origin? Is it where the universe began?” Her eyes were feverbright and her hands clasped and unclasped.

  “That’s something we’re looking into.” Dawson replied, then nodded back to Sykes.

  “This, other planet, that we’ll be visiting today looks to be fairly Earthlike from what we gathered from the probe. Atmosphere is breathable, a little heavier on the oxygen than we’re used to, but might be what Earth was like a few thousand years ago. Gravity seems fine, maybe a little more than what we have here, but doable, and there will be more oxygen so that should allay any respiratory concerns. The plant life looks similar to what you might find in the northern hemisphere here. We’ll have to get samples to know more than that though. The probe didn’t spot any animals or people or… other, but audio did pick up the sound of insects.” He considered. “Well, we think they’re insects. Honestly, it sounded like crickets, but as the science types keep telling me, we don’t want to make any assumptions.” He shrugged, then continued about possible pathogens, but Dr. Zanna found herself unable to maintain focus on his words.

  She wanted to take time to examine each of these people. This was a big day, and she’d want to remember every part of it, but also, before heading into the unknown, she wished she knew better who would be accompanying her. She started with Sykes. He was tall, African American, with close cropped hair that was showing some gray. He had strong, clean cut features and a sprinkle of darker freckles over his nose. She estimated him to be in his early forties. He looked fit, unsurprisingly and had a calm posture. His shoulders were down, hands folded comfortably in front of him. He didn’t twitch or fidget, but did move with energy. Dr. Zanna thought he looked very steady, like a mountain that kept up with its exercise regiment. She didn’t see a wedding band or any other jewelry, but did spot the edge of a tattoo coming out of his shirt sleeve. Dr. Zanna speculated that he might have put work before long term relationships, not necessarily healthy, but also not necessarily a bad trait in someone who was going to be in charge. He would expect similar from his team then, but that also wasn’t a problem for Dr. Zanna, she prioritized work over long term relationships too. Or, perhaps she was just making a lot of assumptions based on very few data points. She moved her attention to Specialist Johnston.

  He looked to be in his mid thirties, had wavy dark brown hair down to his ears and a tan complexion. He was lean and had a lot of ropey muscle. No jewelry or any personal ornamentation really. She’d noticed his eyes earlier, tracking all of the motion in the room. He was still doing it, so Zanna assumed it was a long held habit. His nose had been broken a few times or more, not surprising really and he had a scar on the top of his right wrist. A burn? It was too wide to be a knife cut, but Dr. Zanna lacked the experience with violence to narrow it down any further. He noticed her studying him and after holding eye contact for a few beats she turned to Lt. Brennan.

  Clearly the youngest person in the room she was brimming with energy. Her knee bounced up and down and the tips of her left index and middle fingers were tapping the table with feather light pressure. She had clear green eyes, pale skin, but not unhealthily so and wore small ball bearing earrings, probably stainless steel. On closer inspection there were tiny flowers engraved in the metal. She wore no other jewelry and her face was clear of makeup. No wait, there was just a hint of brown eye shadow, but that was it. Her attention was devoted to what Sykes was telling them, something about the UV index on the planet.

  Dr. Zanna wondered what they saw when they looked at her. A fairly tall woman in her early thirties with hair so dark it was almost, but not quite, black. She certainly stood out from the rest of them. Her hair was longer, curling past her shoulders, and of course she was in a pantsuit instead of a military uniform. Beyond that, she was wearing makeup and bangle bracelets and while she was in shape she wasn’t shipshape so to speak. But is that something they would observe or merely a projection on her part? They could certainly observe her olive skin and tidily manicured nails, though she wasn’t sure the latter would survive the day.

  It looked like Sykes was wrapping up so Zanna spared Dawson a glance. He was the oldest in the room with hair receding around a central thicket on his pate. His skin was ruddy, with a faint red undertone which gave him a bronzed appearance, like he’d been sculpted and then left out in the elements for a long time. His nails were cut down to the quick and he had a wedding band and class ring. Dr. Zanna didn’t recognize the crest, but it was set with a stone, probably a garnet. His movements were comfortable, but that comfort overlay deep excitement. She could tell from the immediacy of his gestures and the small smile that kept creeping over his otherwise impassive face.

  A knock sounded at the door and Dr. Zanna’s attention was pulled back,

  “Ah.“ Sykes said, sounding satisfied. “And now we have one last member of the team to introduce.” He stood and went to open the door while Dawson chuckled.

  “Major, General.” Came a voice with a faint, probably British accent.

  A uniformed man saluted, but that wasn’t where the voice had come from. Dr. Zanna looked over and then down. There was a...a thing “standing” in the doorway. Her mind tried to make sense of it and the best she could come up with was “spider,” but that wasn’t quite right. No spider she’d ever heard of had fourteen legs and had septilateral (if that was even a word) symmetry. It had glassy-looking “eyes” spread in a fractal spiral over the segments of its body, looking like a mathematician's nightmare of what “full visual coverage of the environment” might look like on an artificial life form. Underneath was sleekly metallic, as if someone was trying to put together a race car intended to speed through those infinitesimal quantum dimensions that physicists insisted existed but were damned hard to visualize. The overall effect was disquieting, leaving her certain of two things: that the thing she was looking at was incredibly dangerous and that it was never conceived of or made by anything human. Calling it mechanical didn’t do it justice, but the description was certainly accurate. It was sleek and all of its articulated joints moved seamlessly as it entered the room.

  Dr. Zanna felt her mouth open and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. “What? Who?”

  The eyes looked like an array of lenses and sensors under glass and when they all blinked at once the effect was startling. Dr. Zanna was at once startled and comforted to notice that the “glass-like” eyes and “metallic” structure did in fact seem to be glass and metal. Whatever this thing was, however weird and, well, alien, in its design, it appeared to be made of things found on Earth and was probably put together using physics and chemistry as she understood it.

  “Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce Makari 4, built from alien specs and Earth hardware.” Sykes said dramatically and with a bow for showmanship.

  Makari 4 waved its, what Dr. Zanna thought must be mandibles, and approached the table. It didn’t come straight to the table, but sort of danced from side to side on the way over. Interestingly it didn’t seem to lose any speed on the way. Dr. Zanna was no robotics expert, but the speed, precision, and coordination of its movements seemed well beyond current human capacity. This was confirmed when it nimbly pulled out a chair next to Specialist Johnston with its front leg and climbed in. The two hindmost legs remained on the ground, although Zanna would have sworn they wouldn’t have reached and when it raised its head it had the sitting height of a child. For his part, Johnston moved back and away from the… creature and seemed discomfited both by it and his reaction to it.

  No one said anything, although Dawson and Sykes shared a look as Sykes regained his seat. The only sound that Dr. Zanna could make out beyond the thumping of her heart were faint motor whirs coming from within the carapace as Makari 4 folded its remaining legs and nodded at the team members. More accurately it didn’t nod so much as some mechanism behind its eye clusters tilted the lenses down and it softly clicked its mandibles in time with the tilt.

  “Though I’m grateful for the Earth hardware, as you put it, we would prefer to be called Videshee. ‘Alien’ just has such an off coloring connotation to it.” Makari said, moving its mandibles as it spoke, although that didn’t appear to be necessary.

  “And you are a member of the Videshee species?” Zanna squeaked, eyes wide.

  “Technically, I am a Jaasoos Videshee, but I fall well within the Videshee web, or, under the Videshee umbrella as you might say.” Its voice switched back and forth between masculine and feminine tambor seemingly at random the end of one measure overlapping with the beginning of another. The effect was oddly comforting, at least to Dr. Zanna. Also, the accent was definitely British, but with a hint of something else she couldn’t identify, interesting.

  Silence reigned again.

  Dawson began to stand up, saying as he did so, “Alright, now that we’re all introduced I’ll see you in the ready room.”

  Major Sykes, who had started rising as Dawson did added, “Dr. Zanna, there are fatigues for you in your locker, we ship out at eight hundred hours.”

  “Fatigues?” Dr. Zanna asked, surprised.

  The room turned to look at her, but it was Sykes who spoke after exchanging a look with the General, “Yes, you didn’t expect to go traipsing on another planet wearing that, did you?”

  Dr. Zanna spoke carefully, “I just thought that in a situation where we may be called on to be diplomats, making first contact with a foreign or alien race, that we might not want to all dress in camouflaged military attire.”

  The others stared at her quizzically. “Doc, we may also be in a shoot first, ask questions never situation. For that, you’re gonna need mobility and you’re gonna want that camouflage you think is so shady.” It was the first time Adam had spoken. He had a lovely tenor.

  Zanna didn’t have a counterpoint that would sway this audience, so she forced down her rising panic prospect and promised herself she’d examine it later. “Right, no problem.” her mouth pushed into a tight lipped smile.

  “Here, I’ll show you to the locker room.” Brennan offered, her own smile bright and cheery. Then, to Sykes, “We’ll be in the ready room in ten minutes.”

  The General made a dismissal gesture and that was that.