Rohit Nalluri

The newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand. – Carl Sagan.

The three carpenter bees bobbed in the air, following each other perfectly. They followed at the same distance, maintaining the same gap between each other and the same altitude. The first bee led the other two confidently through leaves and shrubs and flowers and twigs. Being bees, they commanded all three dimensions, and a person watching them for any length of time must wonder how they achieved such perfect synchronicity. They bobbed like three magnetic black pearls strung on an invisible string. If the first bee stopped suddenly, the second would immediately react to maintain the exact gap, causing the third bee to react in the same way, and the effect was that of watching three magnets softly repel each other. Effortlessly the first bee led through acres of bush, the vegetation tangled beyond belief. An old jungle. The bees lingered over bright, sun-lit flowers before suddenly taking off again, as if reminded of a more urgent mission. From time to time, the middle bee would break away, escaping the chain to fly high above the other two bees – a scout looking for danger, food, direction, destination. His job done, he’d return to the group and become the third bee. In this way they exchanged their roles and position.

The three bees were drones. It wasn’t honey they were looking for but a set of co-ordinates beamed to them an hour ago by a small but secretive team at AI-Divide. Built to mimic nature, AI-Divide’s ‘bee-drones’ were capable of hiding in plain sight. With the advent of miniature drones – the fly-on-the-wall type – and swarm robotics, it had become easy and cheap to spy on someone. A network of open-source hardware leaders had established stringent protocols against using these drones for spying. They had also developed techniques that helped to easily detect these drones in a given area. AI-Divide specialized in getting through these fail-safes.

That’s what these bees were doing – getting through all the electronic shields that were primed to detect any electronic signals and/or the simulation of nature. But these bees were different. They were almost perfect at simulating nature, and they were on a mission.

Corey Ewing, the leader of the team, stared silently into his monitor, patiently waiting for the bees to breach the compound. This would be the first major test for the bees – the compound was drone-proof. AI-Divide’s drones had managed to infiltrate similar drone detection devices (DDD) during their feasibility studies, but this was the real world. Ewing cracked a knuckle. On his screen, he could see three red dots with three red fading trails fly towards a small white building.

‘B1 breached’, said Ramon Miguel, Ewing’s right hand man and co-founder of AI-Divide.

‘B2, B3 breached’, piped Felicity Cox, the third and final member of the small team. Ewing nodded but didn’t speak. He seemed to be waiting for something more. A few seconds later – these drones were fast – Miguel spoke, ‘B1 has lan-…B2….no wait, all three bees have landed. They are live on the walls.’

‘We should be hearing voices soon.’

Ewing only moved when he heard the voice of his President come in through the speakers. He was halfway through a sentence –

‘…don’t know what the consequences will be. We’ve never done something so massive, on such a global scale; we’ve never taken a decision that will affect every single person on the planet. And it won’t affect them tomorrow, but today. Now!’, the President emphasized, and took an audible breath before continuing to ask what was probably a rhetorical question, ‘How are we to respond to this?’

‘Mr. President, if I may.’

The deep voice that came in now interrupted Ewing’s thoughts rudely. Ewing turned to look at Miguel and Cox, who were as surprised as he was to hear the voice of Jacob Banda, leader of the African Union. According to their sources, Banda and the African Union had refused to sign Paradigm Zero and had refused to even attend the conclave.

The three heard muffled voices in the background as the massive body of Jacob Banda rose to speak.

‘I speak on behalf of the multitudinous but united nation-states of the great African Union. My voice is their voice. Over the last decade, the African Union has emerged as the fastest growing economic entity in the world. Not even China can compete with us. Here we stand, primed and ready to rule the world, after centuries of oppression, disease, famine and death. After centuries of our blood and sweat flowing like water. And you ask that we shut down – close our shops, our businesses, our factories and industries, our textile mills, our energy farms – the same farms that provide half of Europe with the power to function. You are asking us to shut down our economies. We stand to lose, like all of you, but we stand to lose the most. It will take us years to recover.’

‘It will take all of us years to recover, Mr. Banda. The ironic thing about Paradigm Zero is that it may, for the first time in the history of humanity, set us all off on an equal footing. Have you heard of a fairer deal?’ said the voice of the Prime Minister of India.

‘But how long will it take? Nobody is clear on that. And how long the darkness?’

‘As long as it takes for the threat to pass’, said an old but not feeble female voice – the German chancellor. ‘You know why we are here, Mr. Banda. All of us know why we are here. What we are confronted with is the largest challenge of our times. We lose time even as we speak.’ The chancellor continued, a sudden impatience touching her, her voice rising, ‘We have had broadcast silence for more than two years now – we are not kidding around here. Not a single radio broadcast has escaped earth’s atmosphere since the threat was perceived. We knew this day would come a long time ago, we’ve been preparing for it for more than two years – we can’t side-step now! The time to take a decision is here and now, gentlemen. The decision is simple – black and white – do you want to continue with the status quo, act as if there is nothing to worry about and continue with your day to day business and possibly die for your troubles, or do you want to take the deep breath, and dive a little below the surface, to hide in plain sight against the approaching enemy?’

The silence that followed was palpable all the way back in the small conference room where Ewing, Miguel and Cox were holed up. Ewing took this moment to contemplate. He had first heard of Paradigm Zero in the last months of his tenure as CEO of AI Divide. No one had expected the company to grow so much so fast, but the company’s increasingly close ties to the American defense industry led to the loss of many good people. When the board decided to enter into a shady deal that would allow the US to invisibly monitor the fragile Asia-Pacific region (especially the Chinese seas), Ewing resigned. It was then that Felicity Cox first contacted him.

She had been chosen by a radical group of intelligence agents from around the world to get in touch with Ewing over something she called “a matter of global importance”. Paradigm Zero was explained to him when they met the second time, in a small but busy coffee shop in East London. She had managed to hook Ewing in by showing him photographs of what governments across the world were simply calling ‘the anomaly’.

‘And this is real?’ Ewing asked, staring at the image on Cox’s laptop.

‘Beyond all doubt. The ESA satellite, GENESIS, has been tracking the ship for over six years now. We believe the ship was moving towards the constellation of Taurus, but changed directions when it first detected radio broadcast signals from Earth. It has been cautiously heading towards us for four years. The ship doesn’t have our exact location, so it can’t see us in the darkness of space. Agencies around the world have spent the last half of the decade retrieving dying, dead and unnecessary satellites from space, to hide the planet further.’

‘Intent?’

‘We cannot be sure. Whoever they are, they approach with extreme caution. The fact that they are out there, consciously searching for us, is unnerving a lot of people. Frankly, it is quite disturbing. Do they mean us ill? We can’t know. Do they have the technology for it? Yes, you can be sure of that.’

‘But how big a threat is a single ship to something as large as our planet?’

‘We aren’t worried as much about the ship as we are of what it means and where it’s from. The ship maybe a scout, looking for habitable worlds to conquer. It may lead an entire armada towards our skies. We can’t afford to take that risk.’

‘So what’s the solution?’ Ewing had asked.

‘Essentially, they want to shut down the planet – Paradigm Zero will initiate a government-led blackout of all industries and all economies. The current thinking is that the ship cannot detect our planet in the darkness of space unless we help them. The industrial and electrical output of our planet is visible, a heat and energy signature that the ship can read like a map. Our planet is a glowing beacon in the darkness. Our machinations will lead them straight to us.’

The voice of Joseph Hegel, President of the European Council, intruded upon his reverie.

‘How will Paradigm Zero be enforced?’

It was the Secretary General of the United Nations who responded, “We’ve set up a ‘watchman’ committee that will be chaired by three representatives from each country or union. The committee will consider the safety of the lives and cultures of individual peoples, races and countries at all times before coming to any decision. The decision for Paradigm One will also be taken by the committee, depending on the threat perception at the time. The watchmen committee will be in touch, through the most modest of methods, with the designated leader of each country at all times. It is the sole responsibility of every nation to ensure the complete industrial, economic and network silence throughout the Zero period. You know what the consequences can be if we fail to observe absolute blackout. The committee will be watching. By agreeing to Paradigm Zero, you agree to hand over certain territorial rights to the committee, including the enforcement of silence by any means necessary. We understand that that is strongly worded, but that’s because the stakes are just so high. Our hands are tied – the threat is real. Our entire enterprise, the collective civilization of humanity, everything we have lived and died for, for the last fifty thousand years, all the hard-won, cumulative knowledge and wisdom that we have painstakingly woven together – all of will come to an end. We are a healthy host, ladies and gentlemen, and cancer maybe approaching. Our collective wisdom tells us that we must shut down – play dead, in other words – and hope that the cancer passes without showing any interest in us.

He paused, before continuing, ‘If we agree to sign the Zero initiative today, it will be effective immediately. The first to go down will be the energy sector, following which all dependent industries will be forced to shut down because of the lack of power, unless shut down voluntarily. The last person to sign will call out the time, and the economies of all countries will be frozen to that time. Stock markets around the world will be put on a long pause. We will –’

The secretary general stopped speaking when he saw the door to the conference chamber tentatively open. His anger rose – he had specifically asked that this meeting should not be disturbed at any cost. He flashed a look of anger at the intruder – his personal secretary. The young woman returned his look with apologetic eyes, and pleaded with him to come to the door.

‘Excuse me for a second, please’, he said to the room, and walked to the door. Ewing, Cox and Miguel could only wonder what was happening.

‘Genevieve, which part of ‘absolute vacuum’ was unclear?’ they heard the secretary general ask, testily.

Genevieve, to her credit, responded with a surprising calm. ‘I am sorry sir, but the news I bring could not wait. We’ve just received word from ESA that the anomaly has blue-shifted. The ship is heading right towards Earth.’

*-*