The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

“A little confusing. It didn’t work out?”

Now he had to tell her.

“Yes and no—there’s a problem. The beacon is transmitting. But it will stop soon. Too soon. The DEO on board is coupled with some kind of dead man switch that—”

“I don’t need the details. What does that mean?”

“There’s only one way to fix this. I have to go up there myself.”

“Knowing you, you’ve already booked the ticket.”

“Yes. I couldn’t go this far and then let it all go now. The beacon has to keep transmitting.”

“So you’re not coming home tomorrow?”

“Unfortunately, no. I would have loved to come to you, please believe me. But I’m flying directly to the U.S. I’m taking off on the 3rd.”

“You’re going into space? You’re insane.”

“It has to be done. I fly with Virgin Galactic. Don’t worry. They’re exceedingly reliable. There hasn’t been a single abort yet.”

He preferred not to tell her that he planned to hijack the space glider. He still hoped that he could somehow spare himself that, after all.

“I see.”

Crap. Franziska was angry. He had hoped that she’d at least understand his predicament.

“How much is this actually costing you?” she asked.

“$200,000.”

“A princely sum.”

“It was more expensive a few years ago.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re saving so much.”

“Please, Franziska, stay in the house and wait for me.”

“That’s a lot to ask... You know that?”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’ll think about it, Peter. That’s all I can promise you.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“Until you get back, I don’t want to talk to you again. You hear me?”

“I... Okay. Then how do I find out what you’ve been thinking about?”

“You’ll see when you enter the house.”

Franziska hung up. He had done his best. More than that was not possible. She hadn’t said she loved him. But she hadn’t said she didn’t love him either.

That gave him hope. Still, tears ran down his face. He didn’t know where the salty stuff came from.

March 31, 2026 – In Transit

The airplane shuddered its way across the Atlantic. The on-board entertainment system seemed to be overloaded by the simple map display. Eight hours to go.

The air was dry, and the neighbor in the middle seat, 40ish, had been farting constantly since takeoff and obviously thought no one would notice. At some point, his digestive system would manage to equalize the pressure, right? At least he didn’t have to fight for the armrest. Since the food trays had been cleared, his neighbor had been sitting with his eyes closed, his arms folded in his lap. Now and then one eyelid twitched, which Peter noticed even when he was not looking.

A transatlantic flight like this was really no fun. He’d wrestled with the idea of paying for business class, but it was a day flight, so he wasn’t likely to get any sleep anyway. Why should he pay three times as much money just for the better food? He would land in Houston, Texas, at 6 p.m. Central Daylight Time—7 hours and 55 minutes to go. After that, immigration to the U.S., which often took forever. If he was unlucky, he’d miss the connecting flight. If he was lucky, he’d be in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at 9:41 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time. Phew.

Peter leaned forward to catch a glimpse out of the small window. As he did so, his gaze fell on the woman sitting in the window seat. She was half the age of his immediate neighbor and quite pretty. That was noticeable, even though she was wearing a baggy sweater and sweatpants. His two seatmates knew each other—she was probably his daughter.

The woman winked at him. Peter felt caught and leaned back. All he’d wanted to do was look out the window! He tapped around on the screen. Supposedly there was a camera that looked straight down, but all it showed was ‘snow.’

Peter took his notebook from the seat pocket in front of him, folded down the little table, and placed the computer on it. The web browser offered to connect it to the super-fast on-board network, but he turned off the wireless module. Last night, as he lay awake in the airport hotel in Helsinki, he’d thought about the messages. The language model had translated them into human poetry.

Did that mean that there was a cross-species language that used lyrical devices? But what did it really mean? The poems into which the messages had been transformed did not convey facts, but feelings. Perhaps because there were, in reality, no facts in the data. Or maybe because there was no common ground to translate the factual part of the message. The only thing the AI could transmit was that for which mutual understanding was possible. That would be raw feelings like loneliness or passion, longing or love.

A nice thought—Franziska would be happy about such communication. Unfortunately, it was impossible to verify. But then, shouldn’t the solar system at least participate in the conversion? The signal that his beacon had been sending out so far was completely bland. It was saying, “I’m here,” nothing more. Presumably, it was enough to stop the annihilation. Hopefully, it was enough. But what if another rational being was checking the 418-megahertz signals in the cosmos and came across the sun? Then the inhabitants of this system must seem to him like unfeeling, cold machines.

He needed a better signal. As a youth, he’d once written poems for an early, purely platonic love. But he was not suitable as the ‘Lyrical Intelligence’ of humankind. He needed something written by a professional. He’d have really liked to ask the young woman in the window seat what her favorite poem was. She had tattoos on her forearms and dark makeup around her eyes, which made her look to Peter’s naïve eye as if she were someone who read poetry.

Franziska would have had a conversation with her long ago. She might also have had an idea herself. So now he had to use the expensive onboard Internet, after all. He connected the notebook to