The Short Lives of Loud Grasshoppers

This is a very short piece meant to leave the reader wondering just how wise it is for us to be broadcasting ourselves into the unknown reaches of space.

“I just can't believe what we found, Liz. It's really remarkable.”

“What's really remarkable is that you were let out of the lab for this weekend.” Liz replied, lounging into the same Adirondack chair as her husband.

John scoffed and looked down at this wife with a pleasant, but distant stare. It was different from how he used to look at her; as a refuge from his work and with the passion of youth, but his more mature love was just as warm, if not as hot.

“...but” she craned up to whisper in his ear, “you want to be there.”

John smiled and rolled his eyes. The wrinkles in his face showed, as if to confirm for her that he was close to retirement. “I want to be here. I want to be nowhere but here.”

He paused to demonstrate the wisdom he had gained in their twenty years of marriage before adding the part that his younger self would have said first, “plus there is nothing happening there anyway, not until Tuesday.”

Liz grinned and shifted her weight. “Good. Then you won't get all flustered and distracted if you talk about it.”

“I don't get flustered and distracted,” John countered, “just excited.”

“Uh-huh.” Liz cooed, “so tell me about it. I know you want to. But for the love of God, the layman's version.” She set her head down on his chest to play her part as his captive audience, a part that she had taken time to master herself.

John sighed and brought his hand down to her hip as he stared up at the stars above. Miles away from the city lights, in a field along a road that lead straight to the top of a mountain, the milky way was milky, the stars were dancing in red and blue and purple and amber. “Well,” he began, “it's more about what we didn't find...”

“You see, the SETI program has been looking and looking through space for decades for signals, and recently we've been searching for exo-planets as well. And you remember that paradox, how life is supposed to be abundant, but so far we have received nothing? Well, that's been harder and harder to understand as we understand more and more about life and the universe. Why are we the only ones sending radio transmissions far and wide, where is everyone?

“So, as you know, Doctor Kentner came up with this experiment a few years ago, and asked me to join his team.”

“Kentner is the guy shooting lasers into space, right?” Liz asked

“No, Kentner is the giant space radio guy.”

“Oh, right.”

“So he sent up three satellites really really far from Earth to try to see if radio waves are distorted and shifted in unexpected ways, because maybe we just aren't looking in the right places for the signals. If it turns out that there is some sort of quantum distortion altering the radio waves and we reverse that effect on our listening devices... it's like tuning a radio.”

“Tuning a giant space radio, got it.”

“Yeah, you got it.”

The long silence that followed was permeated by the loud buzzing and chirping of the insects in the tall grass and surrounding forest of the national park. Liz had momentarily been distracted by memories of camping trips gone by, when they always came to this exact same spot, where John had first been inspired to become and astrophysicist.

“But you haven't told me what's really up.” She said.

“Oh, it's just data is all, we have to look at the data.”

“Sweetie... you've been working overtime for the past two weeks, I was sure there was no way you were getting our anniversary off. Now somehow you've managed to be here, you might as well tell me what's going on.”

John laughed in a nervous way, and as soon as he did he knew that he'd been caught. “Yeah, so we found something.”

“Uh-huh...” Liz replied

“Well, we don't really understand it.”

“Just tell me what you think, then pretend to entertain the majority opinion, then explain why what you think is better.”

John laughed out loud and for a moment and even the insects in the clearing were silenced, “Ok.”

“So, what we found is a distortion in the radio waves, but not the ones coming directly from Earth. We found distortions there, for sure, but nothing really notable, just what we expected. No, we found distortions in the background noise as compared to what we hear near Earth, we found distortions in what is coming around the Sun, and we found distortions in some of the reflections off of other celestial bodies. These distortions suggest, to me at least, that there is something in-between these things, or that there is some sort of gravity anomaly or something, it's like a shiny spot on the floor, we just have to figure out what the substance is that is making it shiny.”

“So, not aliens?” Liz asked flippantly.

“No, not aliens,” John replied, “but most of the guys think there is a constant distortion--”

“Idiots.” Liz butted in.

“Exactly. The data clearly shows patches of distortion. It can be smoothed out to a sort-of constant value, but that could just be coincidence. No, it's probably patches of distortion, we just have to wait for Tuesday to get the data back.”

“The data that will prove you right.”

“Naturally.”

The pair fell into comfortable silence again as they listened to the sounds of nature around them and stared up at the sky which was somehow empty despite so many tiny lights.

“But, if it's patches of distortion, that's going to make things much harder, right? You won't be able to just tune the radio once, you'll have to keep fiddling with the dial.”

“Yeah, and in all honesty, based on my calculations so far it could take a while to get it right even just for one spot, like Andromeda.”

“How long?”

“Using the computers we have now to try to overcome this problem could take thirty to fifty years. With specialized equipment, maybe ten to twenty.”

“So... you're not going to be the first to see the Andromeda version of Flintstones then?”

“I could be, especially if the rest of the team is right and we knock it out of the park sometime this year. But when has astronomy ever been that easy?”

“I have another question.” Liz repositioned herself to look into her husband's eyes. “So, if there are just patches, don't you think that there are any clear patches in the whole sky?”

“The chances of a clear patch being positioned right in front of a star, and that that star has life, and that that life developed radios long enough ago that their signals are reaching us might just be too small.”

Liz looked up and remained still for a moment before John noticed the silence that had fallen on the clearing. The buzzing and chirping was gone and only a faint rustling could be heard before an equally faint squeak reached their ears. After a moment the buzzing picked up, followed by loud cicadas, and the chirping of grasshoppers again.

“It was a bat.” Liz said.

“I like bats.” John mused.

Suddenly an idea struck Liz. She bounded out of the strange position she had gotten into and onto her feet, then yelled “hey!” At the top of her lungs.

Her voice echoed off the surrounding hillsides as silence had settled once more. John grinned up at his wife, surprised and delighted by her spontaneity as he had been decades before. She looked straight up at the sky then, her long wavy hair cascading off of her shoulders.

“John,” she said, voice made strange by the angle of her throat, “what if there is no distortion.”

“You mean it just a problem with the satellites or something? That's possible, but it just seems so unlikely that the whole universe would be silent, I think we're just not listening--”

“HEY!” Liz screamed again, this time making John jump, but silencing the forest for a second time. “What if there are others out there... a lot of others...” Liz looked back to her husband as the cacophony of mating calls resumed, “but everyone else is scared to make any noise?”

John scoffed, “why, because of your shouting?”

Liz took a step forward as a shiver ran down her spine, “because of bats.”

Reviews

[Cindy Marietta]

This was really intriguing, definitely makes me want to read more. I like how you intertwined some different ideas here, was enjoyable to read.

[Sami Khalil]

I really enjoyed reading this part science, part nature story. I was transported to the scene to listen intently to the conversation. Excellent, sir.....:).......