“Get up now,” a voice said.
She looked around, confused. For a moment she thought it was another television speaking. But the source of the voice stepped in front of the monitor and the light of the screen gave it form. It was an alien, a male, one of the tall, pale creatures they’d seen several times on this planet. He switched the button to end the video transmission.
“I am becoming ill on this air,” the alien said flatly. “And I cannot leave you alone inside the machine. You must exit at once.”
Jill didn’t move, too amazed to connect these words with herself.
“Please get up and leave the machine,” the alien repeated in a higher pitch, motioning his long fingers.
She stood obediently and began to move back the way she had come. She didn’t feel the alien brush past her, but in a few minutes she heard the door up ahead of her open and saw the light of the outer chamber. The alien was at the door, holding it open. She slipped through, anxious to keep her distance from the thing, and she didn’t turn around until she was a good twenty feet away. When she did turn, the alien was standing at the machine with his arms at his sides, face blank.
He was tall and stick-thin, as all the males were. It was startling to have those huge gelatinous black eyes actually focused on her. He spoke: “The probability is low that you would be able to start the machine, but I prefer that you not enter it again.”
“You can see me,” Jill said.
“Obviously.”
It was spoken in such a dry, factual way that it was almost funny. The weirdness of the situation—actually talking to one of these creatures—suddenly impressed itself on Jill and for a moment pushed everything else from her mind, even the machine.
“Most of the aliens on this planet don’t seem to be able to see us. At least, they have not acknowledged us in any way.”
“They do not see you because they do not expect you to be there. I, myself, saw you and the male some days ago. I have been analyzing the benefit of contact and had decided against it. It was only to ask you to leave the machine that I spoke.”
“What do you mean, they do not expect us to be there?”
He answered patiently, as if talking to a moron, “The brains of most species are designed to interpret energy patterns into three-dimensional solid matter. If an energy pattern is not anticipated it may be discarded by the filter as random noise.”
Jill gave this some thought. She herself was certainly capable of filtering out an awful lot when she was preoccupied, even large expected things, like, say, Dick Chalmers. “But we saw you. Are your brains so different from ours?”
The alien did a slow double blink before answering. “Your brain specifically is much like ours. You were in a strange place and therefore were expecting to receive unusual patterns. The same is not true for the ones who live here. I, myself, was able to see you because of the nature of my work. I have been programmed to think about other species. I have diagrams of many species and that is why my brain is familiar with the concept.”
“Oh.” Jill thought it could take the rest of her life just to understand everything he’d just said.
“However, one thing of interest I have observed while studying you: the male’s brain is more different from ours. When you and the male separated I made the calculation to follow you for this reason. I do not understand the brain of the male. You are female—this is true?”
“Yes.”
“Curious,” the alien said flatly.
Despite his choice of vocabulary, there seemed to be no emotion in him, not surprise and not much curiosity. He stood motionless, staring at her, his translucent lids rising and falling over that jelly coating on his eyes. It was a little gross.
“You don’t have many females, do you?” Jill tried. “Is that what’s wrong with your planet?”
“Wrong?”
“The City is almost deserted.”
“You refer to the fact that our species will soon cease to exist. We have come to see this as an inevitability. As machines become obsolete, so do species. I am a postspecies specialist. It is my job to prepare for our extinction, for those who may come.”
He said it so matter-of-factly. It was depressing, but Jill couldn’t help thinking that if they were expecting someone, there would be space travel, perhaps even rescue. “Who are ‘those who may come’?”
“Unknown. The statistics are high that others will come in time. Your appearance was far sooner than predicted. However, I have reached the conclusion that you are not proper recipients. Someday someone will come who will be the appropriate vessels for our legacy.”
“Your legacy? You mean your technology? Your knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“But I’d like very much to learn what you know!”
“Are you and the male breeders? Can you repopulate this planet?”
“No,” she admitted. “Our gene pool couldn’t survive without other human beings to breed with.”
“Then you can make no use of our legacy. I must go back to work now. Please return to the surface and never go inside the machine again.” The alien walked toward the stairs, apparently with every intention of ending contact.
Jill went after him. “Wait! You have space technology. If you can help us get back to our planet, our people would be very interested in your legacy.”
The alien stopped and gave this brief consideration. “I have noted your interest in the spaceport. Perhaps you are considering that as a means of transportation. It is impossible. I have detected from your physical makeup that you are from a dark universe. Our intergalactic space travel functionality was shut down four hundred years ago. Our interuniversal was shut down one thousand years ago.”
Jill tried to comprehend what he was saying. One thousand years ago they had had the technology to travel between universes. One thousand years ago—but no more. “But… if you had the technology once, surely it can be resurrected!”
“Reinstated is a more accurate word in your language. At this time most of our power grid has been redirected to our maintenance program. We cannot spare the energy. Also, our space program shutdown program was not designed to be reversible.”
Jill felt that news sink in. The spaceport was a bust, just as Nate had feared.
“Furthermore, a species from a dark universe would not be suitable recipients for our legacy.”
“What do you mean by ‘dark universe’?”
“A ‘dark universe’ is any universe with a greater than forty percentile negative force. It is difficult to believe, but we once came from one ourselves. Before that.” He pointed at the machine and shuddered, his face showing dislike, though Jill couldn’t have said how. “But that was over two hundred thousand years ago. We have few records left of what it was like on the dark world.”
Jill stared at the machine and back at him. She was struck anew, first by the unbelievable time frame he was talking about, two hundred thousand years, then by the picture that was slowly forming in her mind.
“Your people came from a universe like mine? In that… that disaster? How? How did that happen?”
“That is not my area of expertise.”
“But those were your people in there, your ancestors? On the video?”
The alien blinked slowly, processing this. “They were dark people. Yes, they were our progenitors, but many species evolve from lesser things. It is the way of it.”
Jill turned and looked at the machine again, hand over her mouth. She had known it was ancient, but two hundred thousand years? Early Egypt had existed only three thousand years ago. The computer had been around for sixty.
“The machine manipulates the one-minus-one… I mean, the universal wave?”
“Yes. It was bad technology. This place was left here, never to be touched. I learned of this through the legacy. I repeat my request that you do not go inside the machine again. At this moment, I must return to the surface.”