Ailith Drake sat on the third-floor bedroom balcony of a
suburban McMansion located in a cul-de-sac. She was staring at the sky and
listening to an incoming radio transmission. She wasn’t actually there. She was
physically located at a desk in front of a computer whose screen had just gone
blank while she stared blankly at the wall in front of her.
For the past few weeks she had been intercepting
transmissions of encrypted data packets between the stranger and an object in
space. The stranger sat at a small table on which sat a metallic box. A cable
ran from the back of the box to a nearby satellite dish on the roof. A wire ran
from the front of the box to a spot on the stranger’s forehead, who was somehow
controlling the box by varying the pressure of their digits against the sides
of the device.
Sometime during the previous transmissions, the transmitted
glyphs started to make sense to Ailith. Earlier transmissions had been rather
mundane in nature – a commentary on the daily life of an ordinary human. This
transmission was massive, containing several large packets of data regarding
varying defense systems. The corresponding incoming transmissions were even
larger. They were intricate details of a planned invasion: troop strength,
landing sites, and strategic targets.
Ailith brought up a map of the Earth on her computer screen
and slowly started to search for the house where the stranger was living.
Locating the structure proved easier than she expected. She smiled as she
zoomed in to street level on the house. With the details fresh in her head, she
typed the specifics into a document for later reference. It was late by the
time Ailith finished her transcription. In the morning, she would go see an old
friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment