Come find us. We'll be waiting.
“Come find us, we’ll be waiting.”
It had been nearly five years since the Foundation’s first and final contact with the Keradids, five years since Agent Basil Sias had been gifted with the chance to meet Carteckan and its kin. Five years since that all too fleeting moment had been cut short.
Five years, and yet it still lived in his memories like it was only yesterday.
The Foundation had tried to reunite with the Keradids. It had spent years pouring over the documents left by them, translating the alien tongue in the vain hope that they would be able to recreate the technology that had brought the two species together in the first place. Basil himself had assisted, having picked up general sense for how the Keradids communicated and having gained a grasp of a few grammatical basics. He had always been good with languages in school, after all. A small benefit of being raised in a bilingual household. Beyond that, however, was the simple fact that he had been the man lucky enough to work directly with the Keradid ambassador when they arrived.
This experience made him the Foundation’s prime candidate for their grand undertaking— attempting to make some vague sense of the myriad of documents that they had been left. It had started as a massive endeavor, a truly revolutionary endeavor that would shape not only how the Foundation itself operated, but the world as a whole. The Keradid documents held within them information on everything from how to harvest the energy of a star to the secrets of interstellar travel, or so the Foundation theorized. To be involved with the project was a honor, at least at the start, and to be one of the primary project leads?
Needless to say, Basil Sias found himself in the unique position of being one of the most important individuals in the Foundation, at least for a time.
Over time, however, the project shrank in both scale and manpower. It didn't take long for the Foundation to realize it had larger, more immediate issues to focus on, anyway. It had outed itself to the wider world, revealing to them that the anomalous was indeed real and that there existed an entity to police it. While they had hardly declassified every file in their system, they had to deal with the immediate fallout of such a revelation. The Foundation as a whole found itself far more concerned with public relations and trying to maintain control over its global hegemony that was making an effort to crumble beneath it. Suddenly the ambitions of harvesting alien technologies and leaping off into the stars became less and less appealing when compared to the instability at home.
So, the project lost more resources each day. More people pulled to other assignments. More technology diverted to maintaining global systems. Where once there was a grand endeavor to launch humanity into a new age, there was now Basil and a few interns hunched over desks late at night.
“The issue here is that this symbol is meant to indicate the position of the body when the word here is read,” he remembered saying to an exhausted intern once, far too late in the evening. “Kerdadid language is just as physical as it is verbal. Notice how it looks almost like arms?”
He held both arms aloft and slowly dropped them to around his waist as he said the word aloud with a strange, awkward clicking. The intern had given him little more than a lazy nod in response.
This was normally the reaction he got from the interns he worked with. None seemed to truly appreciate the language they were working with. Hell, none seemed to care. Every time he attempted to show them some nuance, some minor detail that made him light up, he found that light snuffed out with a vague shrug or slight frown.
“Ok, sure,” another intern had asked on a different day, during a different session, “But, like, what does it actually mean? That’s the part that matters.”
That’s the only part they were ever concerned with. “What does it mean? What does it actually translate to?” Never any curiosity. Had they actually been there…
… No, he reminded himself. They weren’t there, no one was. No one had actually seen Nest itself, no one had actually gotten to know Carteckan and the others. No one but him, anyway. It was a reminder he had to be given often. He would talk about the Keradids as friends, people he knew, whereas the rest of the people in the Foundation’s employ talked about them as curiosities, anomalies, subjects of study. Basil could see them under a microscope in every discussion, being picked apart bit by bit by a group of scientists more interested in their gooey insides than anything else.
Eventually the world would quiet back down. There would be a return to the unsteady "peace" it had once known, with the Foundation able to reestablish itself at the top. With its global dominance no longer contested, the Foundation once again had the time to revisit old projects. As the Foundation took a more vested interest in the documents that the Keradids had left them, Basil was pulled from the translation projects. The powers that be had decided that their passive progress was too slow for what they had planned anyway. The project was handed over to the Artificial Intelligence department for .aics to handle instead. He tried not to take it personally. It was thanks to .aics like Rosetta that he had been able to converse with Carteckan in the first place, after all. She was plenty qualified for this project, after all. The Foundation clearly had big plans. He didn’t need to get in the way.
Still, as he watched his access to the few mementos he had left of the Keradids vanish to be handed over to the machines, he could feel a hole growing in his chest. One by one the files locked themselves until almost everything Keradid related on his system was left with an “ACCESS DENIED, INSUFFICIENT CLEARANCE” message. The Foundation letting him know he was no longer necessary here. He could return to his normal duties as assigned now, his expertise was no longer needed.
Basil found himself rereading the SCP-7999 file when he got the chance. It was awkward the first time, considering just how much of the file was composed of notes that he had written and transcribed. As time went on, however, the embarrassment melted away into a general feeling of fondness. It was still strange to read his voice, that was certain, but it became a memento. A memory of the time he spent with Carteckan. It was alive as long as he remembered.
His personal notebook became his most treasured possession, filled with the detailed notes of his encounter with the strange, wonderful aliens. It held little information that the Foundation didn’t already have, there was little it offered that the powers that be would see use in. Most of it had been declassified to the public as a whole, the Foundation having long abandoned the idea of trying to keep aliens from the public. Still, it was his, and they couldn’t take it.
He poured over it in his free time, dissecting every page and devouring every little detail he could. If this was all he had left, then he would become an expert of it.
“You’re going to get a hunchback if you keep craning your neck like that, you know,” his husband, Wyatt, said with a playful smirk on his face as he mindlessly tuned his guitar, his lean fingers teasing the strings as he went.
“Concern noted, but I’ll be fine,” Basil retorted. Subconsciously, however, he sat a bit straighter.
“How many times can you reread the same book anyway?” Wyatt continued, cocking his head to the side, “I’d think you have that thing memorized by now.”
“It’s important.”
“Well I figured that much,” Wyatt said with a laugh, setting the guitar aside. He rose to his feet and rested a hand on Basil's shoulder, “But I worry about you, you know? It’s almost obsessive–”
“I’m not obsessed.”
“I said almost–”
“And even if I was, it wouldn't be a problem,” he stated. He shook Wyatt’s hand off, suddenly all too aware of the man's gentle fingers against his skin.
Basil was unsurprised when the man refused to become flustered or retreat. He didn’t even become angry in return, his smile remained ever present, ever gentle.
It was Wyatt’s way, it always had been. Where Basil was passionate and fiery, Wyatt had always been cool and laid-back.
“I get it,” he said with an even tone, “It’s almost like a scrapbook, yeah? Memories you can relive over and over.”
It sounded absurd, hearing him make a comparison. This was a notebook filled with observational notes and records of humanity’s first encounter with an alien species. This was practically a historic artifact. It couldn’t– no, it was offensive to compare it to a simple scrapbook.
“You don’t understand at all,” he snapped back, eyes fixed ahead on nothing in particular.
“Then help me understand,” Wyatt responded, in that infuriatingly calm and clear voice.
“You can’t understand.”
“Then teach me.”
“You don’t get it!” Basil shouted, rising to his feet and pivoting on his heels to meet Wyatt’s eyes. He stared, if only for a moment at them, the emerald green eyes he had fallen in love with so many years ago, and felt the fire in his stomach start to die down. He cast his own eyes aside, in an attempt to reignite the dying flame of anger.
“Nobody can get it. Not you, not anyone else,” he continued, his voice softening. “You, the kids… you all live here. Down on the ground. Your community is here with the average person. The Foundation lives in the scientific, all they care about is the scientific, the objective answer to whatever question they’ve decided is worth posing. I’m not there, and I’m not here. My life is…”
“Anthropological.”
“Xenological.”
“You’ve always had your head in the stars,” Wyatt said with a small smirk on his boyish face. “I’ve always quite admired that about you.”
“You think I’m crazy then.”
“Definitely didn’t say that.”
“Oh, but I am. You can say it,” Basil spat, the fire stoking itself back to life. “I’m the man with his head in the stars and his feet on the ground, the man who sold his life to the world that I’ve had to pretend for years doesn’t exist because some shadow organization threw enough money at me to keep us all fed another week. And here I am now, trapped staring at a stupid notebook day after day like it’s going to suddenly help everything make sense again.”
“B–”
“And you’re crazy, too. You’re crazy for not leaving me the second you found out about all the shit I’ve had to hide over the years, crazy for sticking around this long. I’m not a good man, Wyatt. I’m really good at pretending I am. I’m really good at playing nice with others, and at this point? I don’t even know why the hell I’m doing all this. Who I’m serving with this.”
The two were quiet for a moment, simply staring at each other. Basil’s fists were curled tight, his shoulders tense. Wyatt was just as relaxed as before, his hands hanging at his side with his mouth resting in an effortless smile.
The smile was always effortless for him. He loved with so much ease. Something in Basil told him that he wasn’t deserving of such effortless love. It made him want to scream, it made him want to smash his head into the wall.
And it just as easily made him want to collapse into Wyatt’s arms and sob as those gentle hands wove themselves through his hair, the man’s melodic voice whispering that everything was going to be fine.
“No one cares, Wyatt.” Basil whispered, the fight starting to leave him, “No one wants to understand. They either want the answer, or they just don’t care to even ask. So I’m stuck with this,” he held up the notebook, allowing Wyatt to take it from him. Wyatt opened it, flipping through the pages. “I’m stuck with a journal that dances on a tightrope between memories and scientific research while I try to pretend my experiences, and by extension me, have more value to the world now than they really do.”
“They matter to me.”
“You have to say that.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I truly have never met a good man in the world, have I?”
Wyatt threw a hand over his heart in mock offense. “Saying this after all those times I let you copy off of me during class as kids. After all the sacrifices I made for you!”
A small smile found its way onto Basil’s face. “Excuse me, I seem to remember it quite differently. As memory serves, it was you who copied off me.”
“Ah, so you admit you have value to someone,” Wyatt said with a smirk. With that, Basil was officially disarmed.
“… You bastard.”
Basil sighed, letting the silence hang for a moment between them.
“… I just don’t want them to die, Wyatt,” he finally whispered, “I don’t want to be left as the only person who remembers that they existed. I don’t want them to die with me.”
Wyatt chucked. “You’re right, B. I don’t understand, and I probably can’t fully get it. I never met Carteckan, I didn’t live what you got to. So… help me understand. Let me help you keep them alive. Teach me to love them the way you did… the way you still do.”
“…Alright.”
And so the lessons began. Basil began his work teaching Wyatt almost everything he knew about the Keradids. He taught him about Nest, what he had learned about their society, their language, their beliefs. In time even their kids joined in, bringing their own natural curiosity with them. Their youngest son, Mateo, was especially inquisitive, and took to the lessons like a fish to water. Within a few months, he had even begun speaking in basic Keradid.
“Good morning!” the small boy said, raising his arms in dramatic fashion towards his father.
“Almost!” Basil responded, widening the boy’s stance and lowering his arms, “It’s more like this. You’re doing a great job, though!”
Mateo giggled and wrapped his arms around Basil’s waist. Basil returned the gesture, lifting the boy up in a tight embrace.
“When can I meet a Keradid?” Mateo asked, looking up at his father with wide eyes, “You guys are working on that, right?”
It was true, the Foundation had been working on a way to reunite humanity with the Keradids. It’s why he had been removed from the translation efforts, he’d come to learn. The Foundation had wanted to expedite the process, hand it over to their most elite so they could build some grand machine from the charts and diagrams the Keradids had left them. It had been a grand effort, one that would propel humanity forward into a new age.
It had failed in spectacular fashion, and the public was never to know it had even existed.
“I dunno, bud,” Basil said with a soft smile, “But we’re going to keep working on it. I promise.”
It was an empty promise, but when you work with the Foundation you become accustomed to making them. The truth was that after the spectacular failure of the Interstellar Engine project, the Foundation had shelved the very idea of interstellar travel. Too risky, they claimed, too costly, simply not worth the effort. Where once there had been a buzz of excitement around various Foundation sites about the prospect of an intergalactic humanity, now there was silence. Now the Keradids were a mere anomaly, same as anything else. Given a number, filed away, and doomed to be lost in the shuffle among over ten thousand others. Now the only people who seemed to care anymore were Basil and his family. The Fermi Paradox finally answered, only to drown out into the background radiation of humanity’s daily discourse and Foundation bureaucracy.
Basil felt that sensation of isolation creeping into him once again. He was ready to condemn himself to it this time, however. At least this time someone could understand the feeling.
“When I meet them, I’m gonna tell them about all the stuff we’ve done that they missed,” Mateo said, his earnest voice snapping Basil back to reality.
Basil looked down at the boy with a gentle smile. “Oh, are you now?”
“Yep!” he grinned back, almost proudly displaying the gap where he had lost one of his teeth. “You won’t need to worry about being the ambassador next time. I’ll take care of it!”
“Oh? And just what makes you more qualified than me?” Basil retorted with a smirk.
“Because you’ll be all old next time. You won’t remember stuff well enough!”
Basil chuckled, but deep down he could feel his heart sink. He knew Mateo was joking around with him, but there was a sharp edge of truth to that statement. How long would it take, assuming it happened at all? He recalled Carteckan’s shock at how short-lived humans actually were. Keradid lives lasted eons whereas human lives were fleeting. If they were reunited in his lifetime, would Carteckan even recognize him? Would he greet his old friend as a stranger?
“Dad?”
Basil shook his head, grounding himself once again.
“Let’s get back to it, eh? I still have a lot to teach you if you’re going to become an alien ambassador, bud.”
“Sias! Sias!” Dr. Zacharias Rosemary shouted as he dashed into Basil’s office, stumbling over himself in the process.
“Are you alright?” Basil asked as the man doubled over, panting.
“You NEED to head over to comms right away! They need you right now!”
Rosemary had always been prone to theatrics. Basil had many a memory of the man racing down the halls of Site-58 frantic, shouting about some kind of emergency or major news that rarely turned out to be anything of meaningful value. He had long learned to temper his expectations when working with the man.
“Can it wait? I have these reports to wrap up still, and I’d rather not be here all night.”
“I’m serious, Sias. You really need to go to comms.”
Basil sighed, rising to his feet. He followed Rosemary down the winding halls of 58, doing his best to keep up with the man’s faster than average pace. After a few minutes the two arrived in the communications room.
The room was alive with activity. Basil could barely see through the crowd of people rushing back and forth, furiously typing away at various terminals and shouting excitedly at one another. He attempted to push through the crowd to follow Rosemary, but the man’s more slender form made it far easier for him to slide between people than Basil’s bulkier build.
Suddenly the sound of someone clapping their hands twice drew everyone’s attention towards the entrance of the room. Standing there was a tall, elegant woman. Her blonde hair was loose around her shoulders, spun into gentle curls that framed her painted face. You could tell she was not a young woman despite her attempts to mask the wrinkles about the edge of her mouth and across her brow, and it was this experience that she carried herself with that allowed her to command the room’s attention.
“Honestly everyone, I understand you’re excited but if we could please maintain a sense of decorum and order here.”
The crowd cleared a path for her as she walked forward. She stopped to place her hand on Basil’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze as she whispered in his ear.
“I think you should see this.”
“Thank you, Dr. Hopewell.”
She led him to the main screen of the communications room. It was massive, taking up the majority of the wall it was implanted into. It displayed several different messages from various Foundation sites, but the one of interest today was a message in an odd, but all too familiar script displayed front and center. Keradid script.
“Where’s this from?” Basil asked, still tempering expectations.
“It just arrived this morning, actually.”
Basil’s heart began to beat faster.
“Oh,” he said, his voice shaking ever so slightly, “And when was it sent?”
“Around five years ago,” Dr. Hopewell said. “We had Rosetta translate it for us, but she wouldn’t tell us what it meant. She suggested we have you look at it, just to make sure it was correct.”
Basil approached the screen, his heart racing. For the first time, he didn’t mind. He let it happen, anxiety building in his chest as he traced the message on the screen. His arms subconsciously moved as he worked, mimicking the lively way that Carteckan had spoken all those years ago. He could almost hear its voice in the words, the way it chittered with joy with each new thing it was exposed to.
Translating wasn’t easy. Basil had to stop and check himself several times, partially from doubt and partially from disbelief. After almost a half hour, he was confident he had the message right.
“Come find us, we’ll be waiting.”
The message stumbled from his tongue as he read it to the rest of the room. It was silent for a moment, before erupting into a cacophony of cheers.
The next hour of Basil’s life was a blur as Site-58 erupted into activity. He was bombarded from all sides by various personnel from various departments, all with the same questions. Yes, he was certain that’s what the message translated to. Yes, he was certain it was legitimate. No, he didn’t know they were going to send it. Eventually Dr. Hopewell managed to herd him into her office away from the crowds, allowing him a moment of respite.
“Thank you, Dr. Hopewell.”
“Please, Basil, you can call me Amy. We’ve worked together long enough, haven’t we?”
“Sure,” Basil said with a chuckle, “But you’ve been my boss the entire time. And my dad’s too, for what it’s worth. Feels a little strange, you know?”
“Oh come now, don’t talk like that! You make me sound like some old woman.”
Dr. Hopewell drummed her fingers across her desk as she regarded the man across from her. She had known him since he was a baby, after all, his father having been an agent of the Foundation under her once a few years back. Basil was no longer a baby, however, but a man grown. He was tall, strong, with a dusting of hair on his face. There were even a few gray hairs sneaking in here and there.
It made her feel old. Basil across from her, all the excitement at the Site… it made her realize just how much the Foundation and the world as a whole had changed since she was young. It made her realize just how much things were going to change.
“You didn’t just pull me in here for a break, did you?” Basil asked.
“I didn’t. I want to hear your thoughts on…” she gestured vaguely, “All of this.”
“To be honest, I don’t think I’ve even had the chance to process it all. I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel yet.”
“Give it time,” she responded with a smile, “I’m sure you’ll make sense of it.”
“I’m excited, don’t get me wrong. It’s nice to hear from them again. But what can I actually do about it? A message isn’t the same as actually seeing them again.”
“It’s not, no,” Dr. Hopewell responded. She watched Basil expectantly.
“But at the same time it’s proof that they’re out there, and they’re waiting for us. That message isn’t just them screaming out to the universe ‘we exist’, you know? That’s them telling us ‘we want to see you again, so get over here.’”
“Something we’ve tried and very much failed. In spectacular fashion, mind you.”
“Right…” Basil deflated. At this point the adrenaline of it all was starting to wear off, and he found himself feeling very, very tired. At the same time, however, a small voice in the back of his head was screaming at him to not stop here. That there was still more to be done.
“…Something that we’ve only tried once,” he said, sitting up straight.
“Oh?” Dr. Hopewell said, raising an eyebrow.
“We’ve only tried once, using reports and such about tech created by a species that was fundamentally, biologically different from us in every possible way. There are plenty of reasons the Interstellar Engine failed, but maybe it was a doomed effort from the start.”
“A bold statement, especially when the project was headed by one of the best minds the Foundation has.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Why give up just because you’ve failed once?”
“The Foundation doesn’t have limitless resources, you know, and the Interstellar Engine itself was a massive drain on what we do have.”
“So don’t do the Engine again.”
“What?”
“I said, don’t do the Engine again. We don’t need to try again with the exact same idea.”
“So what are you proposing the Foundation do then?” Dr. Hopewell asked, leaning forward on her desk.
“We do it the old fashioned way. Traditional interstellar travel. The Interstellar Engine was too focused on trying to open a wormhole like the Keradids did, too focused on the instantaneous. We were so focused on how they did it, that we didn’t consider how we could do it our way.”
Dr. Hopewell laughed. “Basil, there is no traditional interstellar travel. As far as the Foundation is aware, the only species that’s proven itself capable of it were the Keradids themselves.”
“I mean traditional with spaceships and faster than light travel. I know the Foundation has the capabilities for it, both conventional and anomalous.”
“Ok, say we do that, then. Say we get together a spaceship and send some agents off towards Nest. You’re still talking about a trip to an object 32 billion lightyears away. At our current capabilities, that would easily be a relativistic travel time of at least a hundred years for the crew, and easily a billion years for us back home. This is part of why the Foundation pursued the Engine approach as much as we did.”
“Something Carteckan said when I was on Nest stuck with me,” Basil thought back to the journal he had read so many times. At this point his past conversations with Carteckan were committed to memory. “‘Each star and system above was searched. All barren and empty, nothing more than a few dying microbes. Planets with the makings of life, but nothing that could think. Fitting, I supposed, for a few dying specs of dust to find others.’ That’s what it said.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow here.”
“We have a message from an alien species asking us to reunite with it. We’re being presented here with the chance for something incredible. I’m saying we put aside our need for instantaneous gratification, and consider a different option. Carteckan told me directly that there are hundreds, potentially thousands of habitable planets between us and them.”
“So you’re proposing that we make humanity interstellar, then?” Dr. Hopewell said, a small smile creeping onto her face.
“Exactly. We go from planet to planet, establish colonies as we go, and eventually reunite with them. Who knows how long it’ll take, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, right?”
“This is a big, big ask, Basil.” Dr. Hopewell said, steepling her fingers on her desk. “You’re asking for something that would require the Foundation to basically abandon the mission of the veil entirely and work together with civilian groups at large to work towards something that will take generations for us to actually see any results from. Something that none of us alive now will even be around to see the results of.”
“Isn’t that what 58 has always tried to work towards, though? Creating a new, better future for whoever comes after us?”
Dr. Hopewell’s smile turned to a full grin at this point.
“And tell me, Basil, do you really expect people to agree to this? Abandoning everything they’ve ever known to throw themselves off to the stars and hope there’s something out there for them?”
Basil nodded. “I do, yeah. We were able to get the pilgrims to sail blindly across the sea hundreds of years ago on the same blind faith. I believe with everything I am that we can make the same thing happen now, with proper precautions in place to ensure that we don’t completely ruin whatever we touch.”
“Just who is going to lead this new generation of pilgrims to the stars, then?”
Basil took a deep breath.
“I will.”
Dr. Hopewell gave him a sincere smile in response. She rose to her feet, and took his hand in her own. She rested her other hand atop, and held it for a moment. Her answer came quietly, as if she herself was surprised she was saying it.
“Alright.”
As Basil left her office, the message from the Keradids echoed in his head.
“Come find us, we’ll be waiting.”
His heart was racing once again, but this time he allowed himself to get excited. He didn’t know if there was a chance that this shot in the dark would result in anything, he could be truly delusional and simply not ready to admit that to himself. At the same time, though, he thought of his family. The chance for Wyatt to truly live in his world with him, the chance for Mateo to become a greater ambassador than he was.
There were so many doubts and anxieties swirling in his head, but he held it high anyway. He could see a new, bright future ahead for himself and everyone else.
“I’m coming, everyone. Just wait for me.”