Ada Flanagan had been waiting for this day for months. Years even.
“…7i-Rubin, the interstellar comet will pass by Earth over the next few days. Initially thought to be on a collision course with our planet it will safely pass by, missing us by an estimated 400000 kilometres….” the announcer said on the television.
At her job in the Dunsink Observatory, her and her colleagues had been keeping an eye on the passing interstellar object. The last few years had seen an increase in detected interstellar comets and the last couple had even resulted in a few meteorites landing across the globe.
Nothing too nefarious there, once the first was spotted back in 2020 it became a routinely easy to spot the next one. 7i-Rubin looked like it was coming from the direction of the Tau Ceti system.
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Kyle was surrounded by flashing red lights in a small single occupant drop-tube.
“What the fucks happening Winston?” he shouted coldly.
A droll voice replied from his smartwatch “I'm looking into it, hold on! Looks like the tubes systems are trying to resolve an internal conflict”.
“Can you possibly ask it to compartmentalise that conflict until we land?” Kyle asked as panic started to increase directly proportional to the distance to the ground.
“It's not sentient Kyle, I can't reason with it. It's basically a moron delivery system.” he rebutted. “Let me try something.”
With a whirr and a click the red lights turned off…..but so did everything else, including the engines.
Agonising seconds later, with a click and a whirr, the system came back online.
“Okay, we're all good” Winston chirped.
“What was that? What did you do?” Kyle said as his heart still pounded in his mouth.
“I cycled the drop tubes processes” Winston replied.
“You turned it off and on?” Kyle said wryly.
“I turned it off and on” Winston said proudly.
“Wouldn't that include the cloaking too?” Kyle asked in a concerned tone.
“Well, yes but only for a few seconds. Better that than both of us going splat in an invisible tube.” Winston responded. “Besides, they're primitives. No one down there would have noticed that.”
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Ada's internal work chat pinged at her desk.
Ciara Dempsey was a friend/colleague in the Observatory. Ada was a stargazer at heart but Ciara took it to a whole new level. There were a litany of things she'd do to just get a foot inside the door of the European Space Agency.
Hey, we just spotted something!
I'm all ears
Or eyes
Or whatever. Go on!
It was only for a minute but there's a few sightings of a fireball on Nemetode.
Cool. Over England or what?
Ireland, dickhead! Be more excited.
Okay, I'm on board now. What's the story? How close?
I'm trying to figure it out, the Discord's going mad about it. Fireball in the sky over Wicklow/Dublin. Visible for a minute or so. Looks pretty big.
Right, and? What are ya saying?
I'm saying this could be huge. You know how few meteorites have ever been found in Ireland! It's out near your neck of the woods. Just say you're going to work from home for the afternoon or something and take a quick look around.
No way. Where?
Ticknock
TICKNOCK!
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“Ticknock! ” Kyle shouted.
“Yes, Ticknock. A townland of Rathdown, Dublin, Ireland. Mostly known for its large forested area on the side of a mountain, which you are now in” Winston replied matter-of-factly.
Kyle's stared blankly at the face of his smartwatch that housed the AI. “Winston! I'm meant to be in Boise, fucking Idaho. How did I end up in TICKNOCK?”
“I'm glad you asked. Remember that little light show you had on the way down due to an internal conflict?”
“Yes, not something I'll forget soon” Kyle replied.
“Well it would appear that the conflict was the tube trying to reconcile it's destination with it's passengers details. Did someone get in the wrong tube? “ Winston mocked.
“No I didn't get in the wrong tube. I got in MY tube.” Kyle said.
Winston tried to reason “There was a lot going on, everyone jumping ship. Lights and sirens. It's easy to understand if you got confus….”
“IT WAS MY FREAKING TUBE!” Kyle bellowed.
They had trained for this day for years during the trip from Tau Ceti. Kyle would had to have a serious brain injury to have simply boarded the wrong tube.
“Okay Mr Pringle, let's keep it down a bit. Covert infiltration mission, remember?” Winston interjected.
“We're in a God damn woods Winston! So what DID happen then?” Kyle asked.
“Ruling out user error? Any one of a number of classic Thalori-type issues: Shoddy build design, Imperfect calculation, Environmental interference, Sabotage
The last one Winston said as if he was twirling a non-existent moustache.
“All right, fuck it. What do we do now? I mean, Ireland? Are they even any objectives listed for this place? “ Kyle asked
Winston began “First steps are the same as anywhere.
1. Get rid of the tube and collect the nanites
2. Establish a base of operations
3. Setup comms “
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“This is stupid. This is pointless. This is stupid and pointless” Ada muttered to herself as she sat in her car at the base of Ticknock Mountain.
“It's a needle in the haystack. It's worse, it's a specific rock in a mountain full of fecking rocks” she thought to herself.
“Feck it. I need something like this. Some form of excitement. Anything at all for feck sake.”
She laced up her boots, threw her backpack over her shoulder and checked the optimistic GPS coordinates Conor had sent on.
She walked through the main trail she had been up before so often as a child, on to lesser trodden paths until eventually it became clear she would have to go off the beaten path.
“What am I even meant to be looking for? A smoking crater with a large ominous glowing rock in the middle of it? “ she thought.
“And I'll just put that into a backpack that I wasn't confident could support the weight of my school books 10 years ago” she muttered to herself “And it definitely won't give me cancer!”
As she neared the estimated location she began looking for smoking craters…and she thought she could hear muffled conversation nearby.
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“Okay, you have to give me something here!” Kyle desperately pleaded.
“You do the work, you get the rewards. That is the Conservatores way Mr Lewis” Winston responded.
“I know that but can't you just give me a jacket or a pair of gloves? Thicker socks?! ANYTHING?” Kyle tried to reason in vein.
“You were provided with adequate clothing and resources to begin your mission Kyle. You have everything you need” Winston rebutted.
“Yeah, but there are mitigating circumstances here Winston. I, was meant to land in an abandoned lot in Boise, Idaho in the middle of the night. I'm in Converse for fuck sake” Kyle said.
“I would if I could Kyle…well I wouldn't really….but either way I can't provide you with anything until you've completed a few basic objectives at least. Think of this as a character building exercise.” Winston enthused.
“Is faceplanting down the side of a mountain an objective because I'm going to complete that with minimal effort” Kyle bemoaned.
“Don't be ridiculous…you still wouldn't manage to complete that objective to my satisfaction” Winston said.
The AI continued “Besides, you have the first part of an actual objective to complete. Get out of the tube and let's break it down”
Kyle exited the still cloaked tube. From the outside he seemed to appear out of thin air. Like a drawing on a sideways piece of paper being turned to show you it's newly created art. He was indeed in a forest. The tube had taken a few branches down and cleared all leaves in a 10 foot radius while it landed almost silently.
“Okay, let's get this over with” Kyle said, a grimace forming on his face.
“Beginning landing tube integration” Winston said robotically as a 3 second timer appeared on the face of his watch.
As the timer hit 0 the tubes cloaking deactivated and it began to de-materialise into a cloud of nanites. When the tube had been completely erased the swirling ball of microscopic robots abruptly paused in mid-air and, just as suddenly, flew directly at Kyle.
“I hate whoever signed off on this step”. Kyle said through gritted teeth as the nanites made their way to him.
They began to disappear underneath his skin, through every pore and orifice. As they did the nanites added mass and weight to his slight build, making him appear stockier than he really was.
“Would you prefer to carry the 4 billion nanites around in a nice little carrier bag? A tote perhaps. Would that be easier for you?” Winston asked. “Almost done. Just stay with me and don't lose consciousn…”
Kyle collapsed on the forest floor.
He awoke seconds later, feeling a agonising vibration on his wrist.
“And we're back! Up and at ’em, it's time to start step two” Winston informed him cheerily.
Just then a female voice cut through the air “ Is somebody there?”
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“Is somebody there? Ada repeated.
Her blood pulsed. She rummaged in her pockets for her keys, thinking that she could interlace them between her fingers to create a shoddy knuckle duster. “I’m going to do more damage to myself with these than fight off any potential woods-based sexual predator” she thought, but it was better than nothing.
A large burly man appeared from behind the trees…accompanied by a shorter woman. Neither looked threatening in there matching flannel shirts and mismatching beanies.
”Hey! You’re not Ada, are ya?”
Bewildered, Ada replied “Yeahhhhh? H-how do you know me?”
“Ciara said you might be coming up this way. We’re on the same Discord.” the woman said cheerily, showing the same GPS tracker app that Ada used.
Bewildered in a more outraged sense Ada said “Good woman Ciara, hedging her bets”.
The woman snorted “Yeah, she was all over this today. We haven’t spotted anything though and it’s been a while”
“A few broken branches and scattered leaves but I suppose that could have been a goose or something” the man continued.
“Some big fecking goose” Ada joked.
The shorter woman interjected “There was an American lad up here when we arrived but he said he was just out for a walk and got lost. We pointed him in the right direction down”.
“And you’re sure he didn’t have anything on him? No big glowing rocks or anything?” Ada asked.
“Hah nothing that we could see?” The man replied. “Hard to hide something like that”.
”Weird lad though. Who goes for a stroll up a mountain in Cons?” the woman continued.
Ada searched for a while longer with her new forest chums but found nothing.
She looked at the area with the scattered leaves one last time; something unusual had definitely happened here. On closer inspection she could see that the ground was ever so slightly recessed compared to the surrounding brush. It really was like something big came down but there was nothing else to suggest it.
She waved it off, it was time to back online at home before anyone started looking for her.
Acting on impulse Ada thought “Let see if he really did spot anything. Even a huge fecking goose”.
She stopped the car and opened the passenger side door.