Tevun-Krus #60 - Final Contact

Genesis - A Short Story by @elveloy

To Joanne's disappointment, there were no portholes in the shuttle. She'd been hoping for a real view of Earth, only ever seen before in photos, but everyone was seated inside the sealed capsule, in rows, just like an ordinary trolley car. She tilted her head, for a moment there she thought she heard shouting, outside in the docking bay. But then the roar of the shuttle drowned out everything else.

There was no time to look around when they disembarked, not that there was anything to see, in any case. Where was the vast open space filled with plants and light that Joanne had pictured in her imagination so many times? Instead, they came through the airlock, out into a small windowless room. A grey-haired woman in an unfamiliar uniform was waiting for them.

"Welcome to Genesis. Please follow me," she instructed, sounding more like an army sergeant than a fellow scientist.

She led them briskly down a narrow corridor then opened a door to a small room, seemingly filled with bunk beds. "First six in here," she ordered, not even bothering to say please this time. "You'll have about ten minutes to settle in before the siren sounds. When you hear the siren, strap yourselves into the bunks like this." She reached across to the nearest bunk to demonstrate.

"But-?" Joanne started to question.

"There'll be time for explanations later," interrupted the woman. "There's been a change to the schedule. Genesis is readying for immediate departure." She gave a professional smile and left, closing the door behind her.

Joanne turned to look at the other women, but they were all looking as confused as she felt. Suddenly everyone spoke at once.

"What the hell is going on?" exclaimed the brunette next to Joanne. "I was told we'd have a day to settle in. Have time to explore the ship and find out where we'd be working."

"I don't understand this at all."

"Something's gone wrong!" said another, sounding panicky. She made a dash for the door, though quite where she thought she was going to go, Joanne had no idea.

And then the siren sounded.

"What the fuck went wrong?" asked Rex Vander, CEO of the Genesis project, as he ran angry hands through his hair. He stared at the live feed from the Space Centre, showing images of people shouting and banging on the doors of the shuttle bays. "How the hell did they find out?"

"I don't know, sir," repeated Leo Braun, the First Officer, and gave an infinitesimal shrug. Vander was starting to get on his nerves.

"Everyone was told this was a trial. No-one knew this was going to be the real thing," continued Vander, pacing. "No-one except the people in this room." He turned around to glare at each and every one of the twenty or so people on the bridge.

The Second Pilot, Karl Bronski, kept his head down, pretending to concentrate on the instrument desk. Vander might have claimed until he was blue in the face that there was enough room for every one of the thousands of people working in the Space Research Centre who had put their hand up to come, and even some of those living in New Eden, but Karl knew the dimensions of this ship down to the last millimetre. There simply wasn't the space for everyone. And there was no way he was going to live the rest of his life, however long it might be, without his husband Paolo at his side. It was just too bad that Paolo had insisted on saying goodbye to his parents. Still, the news would have got out sooner or later. Earth's brightest minds, and a few that were just very, very wealthy, had escaped and left Earth forever.

Genesis made it all the way to the Asteroid belt before the aliens introduced themselves. By pure chance, Karl was taking his turn on the bridge, when a bright light appeared, hovering above his instrument panel. He flinched away, imagining an explosion of some sort would follow, but instead, words began to flow across his screen.

"Greetings, human. Congratulations on achieving space flight. Unfortunately, you've made a bit of a mess of your home planet, haven't you? I'm afraid you'll have to go home and clean it up before we can allow you to travel outside your solar system."

"Gah? Wha?" for a highly educated man, Karl found himself struggling to make any sense whatsoever. Maybe he was hallucinating. It had been a long shift. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but the words were still there, along with the bright light.

"Can you see that?" he whispered to the officer seated next to him. Bemusedly, Jan nodded. Karl pressed the call-button on his pager to summon Rex Vander. He wouldn't want to miss this.

"Who are you?" asked Karl, before it dawned on him that someone was playing a very clever trick. He looked around at the small crew, waiting for the perpetrator to gloat but everyone was staring at the light, as if mesmerised. The bright light continued to hover, pulsing gently.

"Aliens!" breathed Jan, eyes wide with excitement. "Our First Contact!"

"Well, first and last contact, to be precise. Unless, you can restore your planet to a functioning, healthy state before your next attempt."

"What's going on here?" asked Vander in a loud voice.

Karl jumped. He hadn't heard the CEO come in.

Vander glared at the bright light and the writing on the screen. "Who, or what, are you? What gives you the right to interfere?"

There was a small pause, then the words flowed across the screen once more. "You don't have a precise term in your language, but you can call us Border Control. I'm afraid you'll have to go back where you came from."

Then the bright light vanished and the screen reverted to normal. Except... Genesis was now heading back to Earth.