Mormon Zen

Alone

Thursday 13 May 2010 by proudlyhumble | No Comments
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Forward

All historical information in this novel is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge. Much of the information cited has been heatedly debated. This may well be because it is false. But it may be because we refuse to believe stories that makes us feel insecure. What a close evaluation of history teaches us is not, as the old saw goes, that history repeats itself. Instead, it is this: history will always surprise us.

Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out

their name from under heaven: and I will make

of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.

Deuteronomy 9:14

0.1

In 1961, a group of scientists led by Dr. Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory developed an equation to predict the number of intelligent civilizations existing in our galaxy. Dubbed the Drake Equation, it accounted for seven variables.

The first two variables are the least interesting: average star formation rate, about one per year, and the fraction of stars with planets, now believed to be one over one.

The third variable in the equation is the first one that scientists seriously debate: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life. In our solar system, that number is no lower than 1/8. For other star systems, we can only guess. The Hubble Telescope employs a primary lens 94.5 inches wide and regularly takes exposures over twelve hours in duration, yet the sheer vastness of space prevents even the Hubble from visually identifying even planets larger than Jupiter. While the Hubble and other observatory instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect exoplanets directly, they are sensitive enough to detect tiny wobbles in the orbits of distant stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets orbiting a given star. Still, the planets themselves remain essentially invisible and scientists are left to guess at how many may be capable of supporting life. A conservative estimate is one percent.

However, much of what we once assumed about life is now hopelessly false. Scientists once believed that life could thrive only within delicate parameters of temperature, water, and radiation exposure. Discoveries since the 1990s have revealed that life on earth manages to thrive even in extreme environments, including perpetually frozen areas of Antarctica and alkaline lakes in California so caustic they can dissolve human skin. Some life forms have been found surviving near deep ocean vents where water temperatures never rest below boiling. Other life forms have been discovered living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Clearly life is more ubiquitous and stubborn than we tend to believe. Which leads to the four variable: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life. All of them.

While this surprises the average reader, scientists overwhelmingly agree on this point. They even have a name for this principle: biological determinism. Where life can exist, it will exist. Some scientists today even argue that no clear demarcation exists between chemistry and biology, that biology is simply an extension of chemistry. Accordingly, life will always arise whenever environmental conditions allow, just as fire will always burn when the environment contains the requisite amount of heat, oxygen, and fuel.

The fifth variable recognizes the sharp distinction between life and intelligent, communicating life. Dr. Drake himself originally estimated that only one percent of life-supporting planets would produce intelligent life. Scientists today are strongly polarized, many arguing that earth is the only planet that will ever attain intelligent life while others assert that all planets that support life will eventually develop intelligent life, a sort of bio-intellectual determinism. This is not so far-fetched. The only planet we know of that can support life, developed intelligent life. As far as we know, the universe is one for one.

The sixth variable is the fraction of intelligent life forms that will develop means of communication via technological means. In other words, detectable signals. Dr. Drake conservatively estimated that only one percent of intelligent civilizations would develop such technology. Using his estimates, Dr. Drake calculated the expected number of intelligent, active communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

His result: 1,000 to 100,000 in our galaxy alone. 10 Trillion in the universe.

In other words, the galaxy should be teaming with intelligent life. Our predicament is that we still have not yet found any intelligent life in our galaxy. This situation is a severe problem for reasons that initially are difficult to recognize but which will rapidly become apparent.1.0

The last of the horizon disappeared as night slid across the sky. Doctor Rosen rubbed his temples and took long, collected breaths. The scattered town lights below in the desert appeared identical to the stars above, making it difficult to sense whether the plane was right-side up or upside down. Rosen felt dizzy. The KC-135 he was flying in had been designed as an aerial refueler for military jets, not as a commercial airliner. As the plane passed through more rough air, Dr. Rosen’s stomach lurched, then collected itself. When the air settled again, he closed his eyes and lowered his head nearly to his knees. His breaths became long and deliberate.

“We’ll be there shortly, Doctor.” The co-pilot said. “We are in Arizona airspace now. We’ll begin our descent in about fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you.” Rosen managed, slowly sitting up. “Any word from Tucson?”

“No, Sir. They had some kind of bug in the probe communication software. They’re working on it, should be up soon.”

Rosen nodded. He gave up rubbing his head, resigned to the chiseling headache in his frontal lobe. He reached for his tablet computer and with a few gestures pulled up a map. A blue circle representing the aircraft strobed dimly on the hybrid image, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. He stared at the glowing and dimming circle, remembering the pulsing blue chests of the victims.

“What?” Rosen responded. He noticed the cockpit, hundreds of dials and switches dimly glowing and rotating, and remembered where he was.

“What?” the co-pilot said.

“I thought you said something?”

“No,” he paused. “Are you okay? I heard you breathing a bit heavy.”

“Really? Nah, I’m fine, just haven’t slept for a while. Not a big fan of flying.”

The co-pilot nodded while Rosen focused again on the tablet, touching the screen to awaken it. With three fingers on the glass display, he slid another window open that revealed a mathematical application. Seven letters confronted Rosen on the screen: R, fp , ne , fl , fi , fc , l. He began to enter numbers next to each variable.

“You trying to calculate your chances of surviving?” the co-pilot joked.

Rosen’s eyebrows crunched together momentarily, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, realizing the question was just coincidence. He let out an awkward laugh. “I get nervous flying, what can I say. Doesn’t help that we’re sitting on 180,000 pounds of jet fuel.”

“Well trust me, these birds are safe. You’re more likely to win the lottery than see one of these crash.”

Rosen looked back down at the tablet and touched the graph button with his right index finger. The screen morphed into a Cartesian coordinate system with dim grey vertical and horizontal bars running across and up and down the display. A sharp red line curved a path downward from left to right, steeply at first then inflecting to an increasingly shallow descent until it met the edge of the screen. Rosen placed his five fingers on the display and drew them together. As his fingers moved, the screen zoomed out to show more of the graph. Rosen scanned the diving line, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Not good.

Rosen aimed his face skyward through the orange blanket of lighting that covered Sky Harbor. He quickly found Venus and then Jupiter despite the light pollution. With his eyes he drew an arching line between the two planets, the ecliptic. The line guided him until he found Saturn. Rosen appreciated the Arizonan sky. Most people knew that Phoenix could go months without rain, but few outsiders realized that the city could go months without even a cloud. An astronomer’s dream.

Rosen glanced at his phone to check the time. His smile faded and his foot tapped the ground over and over while the salty chemical stink from the petroleum storage slipped up his nose. The data from Pioneer XIII would start flowing as soon as Tucson got their technical bug figured out. Rosen had missed the Pioneer XII data feed before contact was lost, so he sure as Polaris would not miss Pioneer XIII when it touched down on the next exoplanet. He scrolled his phone’s directory, looking for the escort’s number. The intense stress he’d been feeling since the meeting at Langley tightened its grip on his neck and shoulder traps.

Just as he tapped the button to call his escort, the black Ford Mustang pulled up, its sharp silver rims flexing in the airport light. Rosen opened the passenger door and threw himself into the seat.

“About time,” Rosen said.

“Easy Doc, I’m on time. Your plane arrived ahead of schedule.”

“Just get me to my office.”

Ten minutes later Rosen could see Sun Devil stadium growing as they neared the university. The football stadium sat wedged between the two peaks of “A Mountain.” In front of the stadium, Tempe Town Lake strolled in lazy blackness. Rosen remembered his surprise at seeing the small lake in the middle of the desert when he first arrived at Arizona State a decade ago to take a professorship. Only in the desert to people build lakes.

“What’s the rush tonight?” the driver asked.

“They don’t tell you?”

“Nah, they just give us assignments and we do ‘em.”

“Then I probably shouldn’t tell you either.”

The driver rolled his eyes. He had grown accustomed to all the secrecy, but did they have to be so French about it? He turned right on University Avenue and guided the Mustang to the curb in front of the Palo Verde dorms. Rosen pushed the door out and hurriedly swung his bag around his shoulder and quickly walked off.

The glass doors were still unlocked. Rosen walked into the lobby and pressed the down button by the elevators to his left. A few students walked past and exited the building. One of the astronomy labs must have just ended, Rosen thought. At least they have no idea. The elevator binged. Soon he was to his office door where he punched in his door code and scanned his badge. The thick door clunked as the heavy latch retracted. He sat down and logged into his terminal.

The large LCD screen at his desk awakened. Rosen pressed a combination of keys and the backdrop image of Eugene Cernan planting the last American flag on the moon faded into a monotonous gray smear. The secure-data-link software loaded. Rosen unconsciously tapped his index finger against the desk, his eyes locked on the blue progress bar pushing its way from left to right across the screen.

His phone beeped. A text message. Raw Data DL’d, Must see ASAP. Can you believe all this?? -Tuscon

Rosen focused back on the terminal screen. The progress bar was no longer moving. He hit the retry button. No response. He pounded the mouse. Still nothing. He heard the whining of his computer’s processors working, picking up desperate speed. Then they stopped, too. A message box popped up: Fatal Error. Please Restart System. Unsaved Data May Be Lost.

Rosen kicked his chair, which slid a few yards across the room. He rebooted the terminal and stared at the screen as though he could intimidate it into working. He grabbed his phone and sent a message back to Tuscon, “damn tech problems.”

Seconds later, his phone rang.

“Hey Stephen, are you looking at this?” the voice sounded excited. Mostly.

“Not yet, my junkard terminal is rebooting. I can’t believe this tonight. Hold on.” Rosen re-entered his password and re-initiated the secure-data-link.

“Okay, well you won’t understand what I’m saying till you see it, but look at the body positions. They seem too... I don’t know, too similar.”

“To IV?”

“Just like IV. I don’t know if we can keep this one wrapped. Two in a row now.”

“Wait, it’s working now.” The secure-data-link connected and the video feed from Pioneer XIII automatically opened and began playing on Rosen’s terminal. He centered his eyes on the screen. The camera panned right revealing a hazel, polluted sky. There were no clouds, just an uneasy haze. As the camera panned further, a red river became visible, slithering through the ruins. It moved quickly, probably thinner than water, Rosen thought. The carcasses looked fresh only because they weren’t carbon-based, Rosen knew this. At least they aren’t pulsing this time. No, these ones were long dead.

“What do you think?” the voice on the phone asked.

Rosen stared at the bleak image. “I guess we’re still alone.”

The man on the phone remotely panned the camera further right and tilted it downward.

“And what do you think of those?”

Rosen immediately closed the call. He hit a combination of keys to save a still-frame from the data feed. What the hell was a human footprint doing there.

2.0

The gamer known as RaV0_zl lowered his goggles and waited to hear his name over the loudspeaker. Back in southern California, he was known as Jett Bass, but in South Korea the gaming world knew him by his enigmatic Starcraft tag, which they pronounced “Rav-oh-Zel.”

In the hallway ramp that led to the tournament floor, Jett swung his arms side to side, like an American basketball player. Gaming is to Koreans what basketball is to Americans or soccer to Brazilians. Three television stations are dedicated to broadcasting gaming competitions in the only country on earth where the national sport is a computer game. In South Korea, professional Starcraft players like the legendary Lee Young-Ho and Jae-Dong are pop icons with literally millions of fans and paychecks that reach high into the six figures through prize money and sponsorships. Over one hundred and twenty thousand fans watched the 2005 SKY Pro-league championship, a Guinness world record for a pro gaming event. No where else in the world is gaming such a cultural phenomena. As gamers love to say, Korea got Seoul.

Jett brought his palms together, fingers lined up, and pressed downward. He felt pressure leave his fingers as his joints popped loudly. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then lowered his goggles to his eyes. He looked over himself, dressed in a jumpsuit littered with corporate sponsors like Samsung and Ongamenet. What am I, a Nascar racer? he thought. But this was what pro gaming in South Korea had become: the digital offspring of Formula I Racing and WCW Wrestling.

Boom. Fireworks launched on the other side of the entry gate and the crowd roared. Flashbulbs ignited. Jett loved this part, it made him feel like a god. The announcer shouted his name, pronouncing Bass like boss, but Jett was used to that by now. What mattered was his gamer tag. “Rav-oh-Zel” the announcer bellowed.

Jett jogged out the gate, arms raised to the feverish crowd. He reached down and yanked off his goggles, then threw them into the stands where the fans erupted and dozens of hands thrusted after the goggles. If my parents had any idea.

But they had none. Even while the crowd cheered, Jett felt his smile fade. They didn’t care. His dad worshipped money at the temple of Goldman Sachs. His mom knew her husband got his intimacy there, probably from the secretaries or analysts. Hell, even he knew that. But his mom was no saint herself. As long as money was deposited into her account every month, she was happy traveling the world alone and doing whatever romance-novel-addicted women do when they are single in foreign countries.

Jett caught his thoughts wandering and shook them off. He walked to his computer station with a sense of purpose. The crowd loved that. They wanted to see confidence He hit a couple of keys to activate the console, then reached for his Bose noise-canceling headphones. They were as expensive as Heaven’s pearly gates, but they worked. They used a technology called active noise control. A microphone embedded on the outside of the headphones detected incoming sound waves, then a tiny processor analyzed those sound waves within nanoseconds, instructing the speakers in the headphones to emit sound waves exactly opposite of the incoming soundwaves. The compression and rarefaction waves would strike each other, canceling each other out and thereby eliminating most or all of the unwanted sounds. They were one more slight advantage.

Jett adjusted himself to the custom keyboard and mouse, both designed to increase his speed when selecting and ordering his forces. Starcraft was a real-time strategy game, requiring split-second decision making and uncanny timing. Tenths of seconds made a huge difference at this level, acting as the butterfly’s wing to affect a vicious storm on the opponent. A voice spoke in his headphones asking if he were ready. He lifted a thumb up and focused on controlling his breathing. He keyed in his gamer tag and ceased to be Jett.

RaV0_zl stared at the countdown. He positioned his cursor exactly where his forces would appear, a location he had memorized through endless practice. Tenths of seconds. The countdown was the most stressful part of the whole thing. He had no control over it. The time inevitably shrunk smaller and smaller until it became zero.

When it did, the briefing screen zoomed away and a rotund building, resembling a circular tank without a turret, appeared on a desert landscape with four small SCV’s. He immediately ordered the small robotic units to gather resources that would build his military and fuel his conquest.

The goal of Starcraft was simple: destroy the opponent. The execution was substantially more complicated. It required building a military force strong enough to overpower the enemy’s entrenched defenses, or a force quick and sly enough to undercut the enemy’s economy, forcing a surrender. Jett had risen to the top of the Starcraft universe by being the first American to win a South Korean pro tournament. His unpredictable strategies left opponents unsure of how to prepare defenses, and hesitant to commit themselves to attacks, desperately aware that Jett had made himself famous by destroying opponents with ruthless counter-attacks. He was the Sun-Tzu of Starcraft, crushing his opponents psychologically then decimating their actual forces.

Jett wasted no time. He moved one of his SCV’s to scout the landscape. An advantage in time or forces meant nothing if you did not know where the enemy’s base sat or where additional resources could be found. The small, motorized unit raced across the map and quickly found the opponent’s base. Jett used the SCV to harass XBanditX’s workers, drawing his attention away from building an army. A successful harassment would buy Jett valuable seconds.

Jett quickly grew his base, adding a barracks to the south to train marines and constructing a factory slightly to the west where siege tanks would be assembled and used for defense. Jett had no way of knowing that a woman named Hillary Shreaver was sitting alone in a small, highly secure office in Virginia watching his game unfold, analyzing his strategy, and scribbling notes on a legal pad. He had no idea that she knew Doctor Steven P. Rosen, and no way of knowing that she would be the woman who would kill him.

---------------------------------------

3.0

The first two minutes of the match were the calm before the storm while both sides built bases and trained units that would later be deployed against the enemy. During those two minutes, there was no way Jett could have known he was being analyzed in a small room in Virginia by the person who would kill him.

He never thought he’d be on TV playing Starcraft, but Koreans adopted Starcraft as their national game like Brazilians play soccer. Their public schools even had classes in Starcraft. He’d met a girl before and asked her if she’d played starcraft before. She answered, “I’m Korean aren’t I?” Nobody realizes it, but these people are crazy. They had the digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers, experienced gamers in their own right who called the action as it unfolded. One of their voices came into his BOSE sound-cancelling headsets which kept out any noise the sound-proof room didn’t. Even with a crowd shouting and cheering fifteen feet away, RaV0_zl could hear nothing but the sounds of the game himself. The voice asked him if he were ready. He raised his thumb, his eyes never leaving the screen. A five second countdown began.

Through endless hours of practice, he had memorized where his first workers would appear on the screen and had already placed his cursor there. It saved him milliseconds. He sent his four workers to gather minerals. The first minute of the game was the calmest. By minute two, things were always unease. Every player had to prepare to rush or defend a rush. RaV0_zl had decided you always had to rush. His opponents knew that, so they built defenses that would shred any early attack by weak terran marines. And because his opponents always knew he rushed, in this last game RaV0_zl did not. He saved his resources and “tech’d,” meaning he left himself exposed for a pivotal two minutes. Any early strike and he’s caught with his pants down.

XbanditX played the Protoss. They were a highly advanced alien civilization with strong warriors and high technology. They had an answer for every technology the humans ever used against them. Except the siege tank and the nuke.

-----------

In a UA science lab in Tuscon, Jeremy Landis hit redial.

“What happened?” Calvin Peters asked him. Calvin stood against the brick wall wearing tight jeans and a University of Arizona tee-shirt with a sketched wildcat

“He just hung up, I don’t know.”

The redial didn’t connect, but after Landis set the phone down, it rang to life.

“Sorry ‘bout that Landis. I think AT&T dropped my call.”

“Oh no problem,” Landis replied. He covered the bottom of the phone and looked at the techie, “It’s Rosen. He says AT&T dropped his call.”

“Ah,” the tech smiled. “He’s a liar but he’s good.”

Landis grinned then pulled the receiver close to his ear, nodding and saying, “right” a lot. He finally hung up the phone and looked back at Calvin. “

“That virus got them bad. If that thing ever strikes earth....

Put him on speaker, the tech said.

“What do you think of the footprint?”

“What footprint?”

“The one on the ground. I showed it to you.”

“Oh, that shadow?”

“You think that was a shadow?”

“No doubt about it. Light and shadow play funny tricks on us in the video.”

“What are you talking about Rosen? That’s high resolution imagery.”

“I don’t care what the resolution is, it can’t be a footprint.”

“Okay, whatever. What do you think happened here?”

“Some kind of virus maybe?

“You think a virus can leave bruise marks?”

“Basically we have no idea.”

he could sense that he was being lied to.

“Okay, well good luck.” he hung up the phone and looked at the Tech. I don’t know what kind of virus leaves

Look Jeremy,

Starcraft is the most popular real-time strategy game in the world. Set in the far future, the game allows players to select one of three races: Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. RaV0_zl always chose the Terrans. They were the game’s only human race. They had the weakest soldiers but the best machines. Machines. He chose the Terrans because he hated it when aliens, even these dinky computer game aliens, killed humans. He’d rather clear the mother f-ers out himself.

RaV0_zl

RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. He cloaked them and sent them northeast near the Protoss base.

Seven hundred miles northwest of Phoenix, RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. The crowd was

The problem for XbanditX was that he had no cannons on the northeast corner of his main base. The fact that he’d spotted the wraiths as they passed the middle of the map gave him some lead time. He swung up the map to his main base and frantically selected a worker probe to warp in cannons. It would take 34 seconds to fully warp in. By then the wraiths would be there, so he started three even though it cost his full load of minerals. Wraiths have poor air to ground attacks, so he knew that even though they could stop one cannon from warping in, they couldn’t stop three, and once one was up the wraiths would have to retreat. The wraiths would be there in just a few seconds more. XbanditX jumped the map to his expansion and ordered the probes to warp in a cannon for defense and a couple gateways where attack units could be summoned.

The wraiths arrived before any of the three cannons had finished warping. The six wraiths fired their lasers at the first cannon. XbanditX had already brought anti-air units to the scene but until the cannons were fully constructed the units were blind to the cloaked wraiths. You’re base is under attack, the computerized voice warned. The red lasers from the wraiths ended the first cannon as it hit 98% complete. No big loss, XbanditX knew that would happen. Moments later, the other two cannons finalized and started firing fiery white orbs at the attacking aircraft. The Dragoons fired their orbs, too, forcing the wraiths away. Your forces are under attack, the voice repeated.

But the wraiths didn’t retreat. This was XbanditX’s first feeling that something was wrong. The wraiths kept firing though they were clearly outgunned now. Two exploded at the same time and a third fell seconds later. The other three were quickly taking serious damage. Your forces are under attack, the voice warned. And they were.

blah blah, some real life starcraft game i’ve changed...

he wins brilliantly.

“gg.”

The applause shook the room like he’d won a basketball game at the buzzer. It took some getting used to. He’d seen this coming, but most people hadn’t. The day when video game competitions would draw crowds that watched on giant screens and cheered their favorite players, mesmerized by the speed and tactical genius. The digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers called the action. Viewers tuned in on their TV’s and literally thousands watched via the internet. It was a subculture forsure, not basketball or soccer by any exagerration, but it was a subculture millions strong across the world. A subculture of tech-savvy youth who wanted to prove they had the genius, the reflexes, and the instinct to win.

RaV0_zl, like all the top players, practiced nearly eight hours a day. Professional Gaming is just like any other profession. It’s full time.

He had gained a popularity on the web. They joked he was “Iceman” because he didn’t make mistakes. He waited for his opponent to misstep, and then he snapped in like a serpent and ripped the digital life out of his opponents.

..They joked he was the “psychologist” because he played mind games. The saying went that to beat RaV0_zl you had to beat him on the game and beat him mentally. No one ever beat him mentally though. He had losses on his record. Inevitable when you play hundreds of matches a year. But he was perfect in every title game he’d been in. When the stress nearly cracked opponents, RaV0_zl slammed the hammer to make sure they cracked.s

They said him was like playing the devil. When you think he’ll poke you in the eye with his horns, he kicks you in the balls with his hooves.

Forward

Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.Deuteronomy 9:14

0.1 In 1961, a group of scientists led by Dr. Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory developed an equation to predict the number of intelligent civilizations existing in our galaxy. Dubbed the Drake Equation, it accounted for seven variables. The first two variables are the least interesting: average star formation rate, about one per year, and the fraction of stars with planets, now believed to be one over one. The third variable in the equation is the first one that scientists seriously debate: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life. In our solar system, that number is no lower than 1/8. For other star systems, we can only guess. The Hubble Telescope employs a primary lens 94.5 inches wide and regularly takes exposures over twelve hours in duration, yet the sheer vastness of space prevents even the Hubble from visually identifying even planets larger than Jupiter. While the Hubble and other observatory instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect exoplanets directly, they are sensitive enough to detect tiny wobbles in the orbits of distant stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets orbiting a given star. Still, the planets themselves remain essentially invisible and scientists are left to guess at how many may be capable of supporting life. A conservative estimate is one percent. However, much of what we once assumed about life is now hopelessly false. Scientists once believed that life could thrive only within delicate parameters of temperature, water, and radiation exposure. Discoveries since the 1990s have revealed that life on earth manages to thrive even in extreme environments, including perpetually frozen areas of Antarctica and alkaline lakes in California so caustic they can dissolve human skin. Some life forms have been found surviving near deep ocean vents where water temperatures never rest below boiling. Other life forms have been discovered living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Clearly life is more ubiquitous and stubborn than we tend to believe. Which leads to the four variable: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life. All of them. While this surprises the average reader, scientists overwhelmingly agree on this point. They even have a name for this principle: biological determinism. Where life can exist, it will exist. Some scientists today even argue that no clear demarcation exists between chemistry and biology, that biology is simply an extension of chemistry. Accordingly, life will always arise whenever environmental conditions allow, just as fire will always burn when the environment contains the requisite amount of heat, oxygen, and fuel. The fifth variable recognizes the sharp distinction between life and intelligent, communicating life. Dr. Drake himself originally estimated that only one percent of life-supporting planets would produce intelligent life. Scientists today are strongly polarized, many arguing that earth is the only planet that will ever attain intelligent life while others assert that all planets that support life will eventually develop intelligent life, a sort of bio-intellectual determinism. This is not so far-fetched. The only planet we know of that can support life, developed intelligent life. As far as we know, the universe is one for one. The sixth variable is the fraction of intelligent life forms that will develop means of communication via technological means. In other words, detectable signals. Dr. Drake conservatively estimated that only one percent of intelligent civilizations would develop such technology. Using his estimates, Dr. Drake calculated the expected number of intelligent, active communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. His result: 1,000 to 100,000 in our galaxy alone. 10 Trillion in the universe. In other words, the galaxy should be teaming with intelligent life. Our predicament is that we still have not yet found any intelligent life in our galaxy. This situation is a severe problem for reasons that initially are difficult to recognize but which will rapidly become apparent.1.0 The last of the horizon disappeared as night slid across the sky. Doctor Rosen rubbed his temples and took long, collected breaths. The scattered town lights below in the desert appeared identical to the stars above, making it difficult to sense whether the plane was right-side up or upside down. Rosen felt dizzy. The KC-135 he was flying in had been designed as an aerial refueler for military jets, not as a commercial airliner. As the plane passed through more rough air, Dr. Rosen’s stomach lurched, then collected itself. When the air settled again, he closed his eyes and lowered his head nearly to his knees. His breaths became long and deliberate. “We’ll be there shortly, Doctor.” The co-pilot said. “We are in Arizona airspace now. We’ll begin our descent in about fifteen minutes.” “Thank you.” Rosen managed, slowly sitting up. “Any word from Tucson?” “No, Sir. They had some kind of bug in the probe communication software. They’re working on it, should be up soon.” Rosen nodded. He gave up rubbing his head, resigned to the chiseling headache in his frontal lobe. He reached for his tablet computer and with a few gestures pulled up a map. A blue circle representing the aircraft strobed dimly on the hybrid image, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. He stared at the glowing and dimming circle, remembering the pulsing blue chests of the victims. “What?” Rosen responded. He noticed the cockpit, hundreds of dials and switches dimly glowing and rotating, and remembered where he was. “What?” the co-pilot said. “I thought you said something?” “No,” he paused. “Are you okay? I heard you breathing a bit heavy.” “Really? Nah, I’m fine, just haven’t slept for a while. Not a big fan of flying.” The co-pilot nodded while Rosen focused again on the tablet, touching the screen to awaken it. With three fingers on the glass display, he slid another window open that revealed a mathematical application. Seven letters confronted Rosen on the screen: R, fp , ne , fl , fi , fc , l. He began to enter numbers next to each variable. “You trying to calculate your chances of surviving?” the co-pilot joked. Rosen’s eyebrows crunched together momentarily, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, realizing the question was just coincidence. He let out an awkward laugh. “I get nervous flying, what can I say. Doesn’t help that we’re sitting on 180,000 pounds of jet fuel.” “Well trust me, these birds are safe. You’re more likely to win the lottery than see one of these crash.” Rosen looked back down at the tablet and touched the graph button with his right index finger. The screen morphed into a Cartesian coordinate system with dim grey vertical and horizontal bars running across and up and down the display. A sharp red line curved a path downward from left to right, steeply at first then inflecting to an increasingly shallow descent until it met the edge of the screen. Rosen placed his five fingers on the display and drew them together. As his fingers moved, the screen zoomed out to show more of the graph. Rosen scanned the diving line, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Not good.

The plane touched down at Phoenix Sky Harbor ahead of schedule. Relief spread across his face when he walked off the plane onto the tarmac. He was glad to stand on a surface that did not move simultaneously along three axes. Most of the day’s flights had already landed, so the tarmac sat relatively quiet. He felt it odd to stand on reinforced cement instead of walk through a corridor to the main terminal, but the Air Force did not do commercial. Rosen aimed his face skyward through the orange blanket of lighting that covered Sky Harbor. He quickly found Venus and then Jupiter despite the light pollution. With his eyes he drew an arching line between the two planets, the ecliptic. The line guided him until he found Saturn. Rosen appreciated the Arizonan sky. Most people knew that Phoenix could go months without rain, but few outsiders realized that the city could go months without even a cloud. An astronomer’s dream. Rosen glanced at his phone to check the time. His smile faded and his foot tapped the ground over and over while the salty chemical stink from the petroleum storage slipped up his nose. The data from Pioneer XIII would start flowing as soon as Tucson got their technical bug figured out. Rosen had missed the Pioneer XII data feed before contact was lost, so he sure as Polaris would not miss Pioneer XIII when it touched down on the next exoplanet. He scrolled his phone’s directory, looking for the escort’s number. The intense stress he’d been feeling since the meeting at Langley tightened its grip on his neck and shoulder traps. Just as he tapped the button to call his escort, the black Ford Mustang pulled up, its sharp silver rims flexing in the airport light. Rosen opened the passenger door and threw himself into the seat. “About time,” Rosen said. “Easy Doc, I’m on time. Your plane arrived ahead of schedule.” “Just get me to my office.” Ten minutes later Rosen could see Sun Devil stadium growing as they neared the university. The football stadium sat wedged between the two peaks of “A Mountain.” In front of the stadium, Tempe Town Lake strolled in lazy blackness. Rosen remembered his surprise at seeing the small lake in the middle of the desert when he first arrived at Arizona State a decade ago to take a professorship. Only in the desert to people build lakes. “What’s the rush tonight?” the driver asked. “They don’t tell you?” “Nah, they just give us assignments and we do ‘em.” “Then I probably shouldn’t tell you either.” The driver rolled his eyes. He had grown accustomed to all the secrecy, but did they have to be so French about it? He turned right on University Avenue and guided the Mustang to the curb in front of the Palo Verde dorms. Rosen pushed the door out and hurriedly swung his bag around his shoulder and quickly walked off. The glass doors were still unlocked. Rosen walked into the lobby and pressed the down button by the elevators to his left. A few students walked past and exited the building. One of the astronomy labs must have just ended, Rosen thought. At least they have no idea. The elevator binged. Soon he was to his office door where he punched in his door code and scanned his badge. The thick door clunked as the heavy latch retracted. He sat down and logged into his terminal. The large LCD screen at his desk awakened. Rosen pressed a combination of keys and the backdrop image of Eugene Cernan planting the last American flag on the moon faded into a monotonous gray smear. The secure-data-link software loaded. Rosen unconsciously tapped his index finger against the desk, his eyes locked on the blue progress bar pushing its way from left to right across the screen. His phone beeped. A text message. Raw Data DL’d, Must see ASAP. Can you believe all this?? -Tuscon Rosen focused back on the terminal screen. The progress bar was no longer moving. He hit the retry button. No response. He pounded the mouse. Still nothing. He heard the whining of his computer’s processors working, picking up desperate speed. Then they stopped, too. A message box popped up: Fatal Error. Please Restart System. Unsaved Data May Be Lost. Rosen kicked his chair, which slid a few yards across the room. He rebooted the terminal and stared at the screen as though he could intimidate it into working. He grabbed his phone and sent a message back to Tuscon, “damn tech problems.” Seconds later, his phone rang. “Hey Stephen, are you looking at this?” the voice sounded excited. Mostly. “Not yet, my junkard terminal is rebooting. I can’t believe this tonight. Hold on.” Rosen re-entered his password and re-initiated the secure-data-link. “Okay, well you won’t understand what I’m saying till you see it, but look at the body positions. They seem too... I don’t know, too similar.” “To IV?” “Just like IV. I don’t know if we can keep this one wrapped. Two in a row now.” “Wait, it’s working now.” The secure-data-link connected and the video feed from Pioneer XIII automatically opened and began playing on Rosen’s terminal. He centered his eyes on the screen. The camera panned right revealing a hazel, polluted sky. There were no clouds, just an uneasy haze. As the camera panned further, a red river became visible, slithering through the ruins. It moved quickly, probably thinner than water, Rosen thought. The carcasses looked fresh only because they weren’t carbon-based, Rosen knew this. At least they aren’t pulsing this time. No, these ones were long dead. “What do you think?” the voice on the phone asked. Rosen stared at the bleak image. “I guess we’re still alone.” The man on the phone remotely panned the camera further right and tilted it downward. “And what do you think of those?” Rosen immediately closed the call. He hit a combination of keys to save a still-frame from the data feed. What the hell was a human footprint doing there.

2.0 The gamer known as RaV0_zl lowered his goggles and waited to hear his name over the loudspeaker. Back in southern California, he was known as Jett Bass, but in South Korea the gaming world knew him by his enigmatic Starcraft tag, which they pronounced “Rav-oh-Zel.” In the hallway ramp that led to the tournament floor, Jett swung his arms side to side, like an American basketball player. Gaming is to Koreans what basketball is to Americans or soccer to Brazilians. Three television stations are dedicated to broadcasting gaming competitions in the only country on earth where the national sport is a computer game. In South Korea, professional Starcraft players like the legendary Lee Young-Ho and Jae-Dong are pop icons with literally millions of fans and paychecks that reach high into the six figures through prize money and sponsorships. Over one hundred and twenty thousand fans watched the 2005 SKY Pro-league championship, a Guinness world record for a pro gaming event. No where else in the world is gaming such a cultural phenomena. As gamers love to say, Korea got Seoul. Jett brought his palms together, fingers lined up, and pressed downward. He felt pressure leave his fingers as his joints popped loudly. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then lowered his goggles to his eyes. He looked over himself, dressed in a jumpsuit littered with corporate sponsors like Samsung and Ongamenet. What am I, a Nascar racer? he thought. But this was what pro gaming in South Korea had become: the digital offspring of Formula I Racing and WCW Wrestling. Boom. Fireworks launched on the other side of the entry gate and the crowd roared. Flashbulbs ignited. Jett loved this part, it made him feel like a god. The announcer shouted his name, pronouncing Bass like boss, but Jett was used to that by now. What mattered was his gamer tag. “Rav-oh-Zel” the announcer bellowed. Jett jogged out the gate, arms raised to the feverish crowd. He reached down and yanked off his goggles, then threw them into the stands where the fans erupted and dozens of hands thrusted after the goggles. If my parents had any idea. But they had none. Even while the crowd cheered, Jett felt his smile fade. They didn’t care. His dad worshipped money at the temple of Goldman Sachs. His mom knew her husband got his intimacy there, probably from the secretaries or analysts. Hell, even he knew that. But his mom was no saint herself. As long as money was deposited into her account every month, she was happy traveling the world alone and doing whatever romance-novel-addicted women do when they are single in foreign countries. Jett caught his thoughts wandering and shook them off. He walked to his computer station with a sense of purpose. The crowd loved that. They wanted to see confidence He hit a couple of keys to activate the console, then reached for his Bose noise-canceling headphones. They were as expensive as Heaven’s pearly gates, but they worked. They used a technology called active noise control. A microphone embedded on the outside of the headphones detected incoming sound waves, then a tiny processor analyzed those sound waves within nanoseconds, instructing the speakers in the headphones to emit sound waves exactly opposite of the incoming soundwaves. The compression and rarefaction waves would strike each other, canceling each other out and thereby eliminating most or all of the unwanted sounds. They were one more slight advantage. Jett adjusted himself to the custom keyboard and mouse, both designed to increase his speed when selecting and ordering his forces. Starcraft was a real-time strategy game, requiring split-second decision making and uncanny timing. Tenths of seconds made a huge difference at this level, acting as the butterfly’s wing to affect a vicious storm on the opponent. A voice spoke in his headphones asking if he were ready. He lifted a thumb up and focused on controlling his breathing. He keyed in his gamer tag and ceased to be Jett. RaV0_zl stared at the countdown. He positioned his cursor exactly where his forces would appear, a location he had memorized through endless practice. Tenths of seconds. The countdown was the most stressful part of the whole thing. He had no control over it. The time inevitably shrunk smaller and smaller until it became zero. When it did, the briefing screen zoomed away and a rotund building, resembling a circular tank without a turret, appeared on a desert landscape with four small SCV’s. He immediately ordered the small robotic units to gather resources that would build his military and fuel his conquest. The goal of Starcraft was simple: destroy the opponent. The execution was substantially more complicated. It required building a military force strong enough to overpower the enemy’s entrenched defenses, or a force quick and sly enough to undercut the enemy’s economy, forcing a surrender. Jett had risen to the top of the Starcraft universe by being the first American to win a South Korean pro tournament. His unpredictable strategies left opponents unsure of how to prepare defenses, and hesitant to commit themselves to attacks, desperately aware that Jett had made himself famous by destroying opponents with ruthless counter-attacks. He was the Sun-Tzu of Starcraft, crushing his opponents psychologically then decimating their actual forces. Jett wasted no time. He moved one of his SCV’s to scout the landscape. An advantage in time or forces meant nothing if you did not know where the enemy’s base sat or where additional resources could be found. The small, motorized unit raced across the map and quickly found the opponent’s base. Jett used the SCV to harass XBanditX’s workers, drawing his attention away from building an army. A successful harassment would buy Jett valuable seconds. Jett quickly grew his base, adding a barracks to the south to train marines and constructing a factory slightly to the west where siege tanks would be assembled and used for defense. Jett had no way of knowing that a woman named Hillary Shreaver was sitting alone in a small, highly secure office in Virginia watching his game unfold, analyzing his strategy, and scribbling notes on a legal pad. He had no idea that she knew Doctor Steven P. Rosen, and no way of knowing that she would be the woman who would kill him.---------------------------------------3.0

The first two minutes passed calmly for most players, but Jett wasn’t most players. He sent one of his SCV units into the enemy base and used its weak attack to harrass and distract XbanditX. He had to while both sides built bases and trained units. Jett distracted XbanditX with The first two minutes of the match were the calm before the storm while both sides built bases and trained units that would later be deployed against the enemy. During those two minutes, there was no way Jett could have known he was being analyzed in a small room in Virginia by the person who would kill him.

his was game four of a best of five, and RaV0_zl held a 2-1 lead over XbanditX. The audience held a sort of energy that propelled RaV0_zl to perform his best. With four consecutive championship titles, his tournament record was the highest in the world. He glanced through the windows within his sound proof compartment. The audience filled the auditorium, a few dozen were standing in the back because there were no more chairs. RaV0_zl thought of what his parents were thinking. More than likely they didn’t care, actually. Dad was so busy at his law firm he never rarely came home. Mom knew her husband had long ago fallen for someone at the law firm, but she couldn’t play sunday school teacher. She had her share of extra-curricular activities. As long as she got a share of the cash, she didn’t need to put a leash on him. She just loved to travel. She’d never made time for one of these starcraft competitions. Never bothered to call and wish him good luck. Online, RaV0_zl was the equivalent of Odysseus. He had a fan club. Hell, people paid him just to watch him play. Replays of his games were the most downloaded of any professional Starcraft player in the world. He never thought he’d be on TV playing Starcraft, but Koreans adopted Starcraft as their national game like Brazilians play soccer. Their public schools even had classes in Starcraft. He’d met a girl before and asked her if she’d played starcraft before. She answered, “I’m Korean aren’t I?” Nobody realizes it, but these people are crazy. They had the digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers, experienced gamers in their own right who called the action as it unfolded. One of their voices came into his BOSE sound-cancelling headsets which kept out any noise the sound-proof room didn’t. Even with a crowd shouting and cheering fifteen feet away, RaV0_zl could hear nothing but the sounds of the game himself. The voice asked him if he were ready. He raised his thumb, his eyes never leaving the screen. A five second countdown began. Through endless hours of practice, he had memorized where his first workers would appear on the screen and had already placed his cursor there. It saved him milliseconds. He sent his four workers to gather minerals. The first minute of the game was the calmest. By minute two, things were always unease. Every player had to prepare to rush or defend a rush. RaV0_zl had decided you always had to rush. His opponents knew that, so they built defenses that would shred any early attack by weak terran marines. And because his opponents always knew he rushed, in this last game RaV0_zl did not. He saved his resources and “tech’d,” meaning he left himself exposed for a pivotal two minutes. Any early strike and he’s caught with his pants down. XbanditX played the Protoss. They were a highly advanced alien civilization with strong warriors and high technology. They had an answer for every technology the humans ever used against them. Except the siege tank and the nuke. ----------- In a UA science lab in Tuscon, Jeremy Landis hit redial. “What happened?” Calvin Peters asked him. Calvin stood against the brick wall wearing tight jeans and a University of Arizona tee-shirt with a sketched wildcat “He just hung up, I don’t know.” The redial didn’t connect, but after Landis set the phone down, it rang to life.“Sorry ‘bout that Landis. I think AT&T dropped my call.” “Oh no problem,” Landis replied. He covered the bottom of the phone and looked at the techie, “It’s Rosen. He says AT&T dropped his call.” “Ah,” the tech smiled. “He’s a liar but he’s good.” Landis grinned then pulled the receiver close to his ear, nodding and saying, “right” a lot. He finally hung up the phone and looked back at Calvin. “

“That virus got them bad. If that thing ever strikes earth.... Put him on speaker, the tech said. “What do you think of the footprint?” “What footprint?” “The one on the ground. I showed it to you.” “Oh, that shadow?” “You think that was a shadow?” “No doubt about it. Light and shadow play funny tricks on us in the video.” “What are you talking about Rosen? That’s high resolution imagery.” “I don’t care what the resolution is, it can’t be a footprint.” “Okay, whatever. What do you think happened here?” “Some kind of virus maybe? “You think a virus can leave bruise marks?” “Basically we have no idea.” he could sense that he was being lied to. “Okay, well good luck.” he hung up the phone and looked at the Tech. I don’t know what kind of virus leaves

Look Jeremy,

Seven hundred miles northwest of Phoenix, RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. The crowd was

He cloaked them and sent them north around the Protoss base. He made sure to fly them within range of at least one of the photon canons the other player had deployed to the middle of the map as a way to watch RaV0_zl’s troop movements. It worked. XbanditX saw the force headed for his exposed northeast base. XbanditX owned the northwest natural expansion slot, too, and hoped to spread to a third resource center. But first he’d have to stop the incoming wraiths. They were invisible except when within range of photon cannons which could detect any cloaked unit. The problem for XbanditX was that he had no cannons on the northeast corner of his main base. The fact that he’d spotted the wraiths as they passed the middle of the map gave him some lead time. He swung up the map to his main base and frantically selected a worker probe to warp in cannons. It would take 34 seconds to fully warp in. By then the wraiths would be there, so he started three even though it cost his full load of minerals. Wraiths have poor air to ground attacks, so he knew that even though they could stop one cannon from warping in, they couldn’t stop three, and once one was up the wraiths would have to retreat. The wraiths would be there in just a few seconds more. XbanditX jumped the map to his expansion and ordered the probes to warp in a cannon for defense and a couple gateways where attack units could be summoned. The wraiths arrived before any of the three cannons had finished warping. The six wraiths fired their lasers at the first cannon. XbanditX had already brought anti-air units to the scene but until the cannons were fully constructed the units were blind to the cloaked wraiths. You’re base is under attack, the computerized voice warned. The red lasers from the wraiths ended the first cannon as it hit 98% complete. No big loss, XbanditX knew that would happen. Moments later, the other two cannons finalized and started firing fiery white orbs at the attacking aircraft. The Dragoons fired their orbs, too, forcing the wraiths away. Your forces are under attack, the voice repeated. But the wraiths didn’t retreat. This was XbanditX’s first feeling that something was wrong. The wraiths kept firing though they were clearly outgunned now. Two exploded at the same time and a third fell seconds later. The other three were quickly taking serious damage. Your forces are under attack, the voice warned. And they were.

blah blah, some real life starcraft game i’ve changed... he wins brilliantly. “gg.” “gg.” The applause shook the room like he’d won a basketball game at the buzzer. It took some getting used to. He’d seen this coming, but most people hadn’t. The day when video game competitions would draw crowds that watched on giant screens and cheered their favorite players, mesmerized by the speed and tactical genius. The digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers called the action. Viewers tuned in on their TV’s and literally thousands watched via the internet. It was a subculture forsure, not basketball or soccer by any exagerration, but it was a subculture millions strong across the world. A subculture of tech-savvy youth who wanted to prove they had the genius, the reflexes, and the instinct to win. RaV0_zl, like all the top players, practiced nearly eight hours a day. Professional Gaming is just like any other profession. It’s full time. He had gained a popularity on the web. They joked he was “Iceman” because he didn’t make mistakes. He waited for his opponent to misstep, and then he snapped in like a serpent and ripped the digital life out of his opponents. ..They joked he was the “psychologist” because he played mind games. The saying went that to beat RaV0_zl you had to beat him on the game and beat him mentally. No one ever beat him mentally though. He had losses on his record. Inevitable when you play hundreds of matches a year. But he was perfect in every title game he’d been in. When the stress nearly cracked opponents, RaV0_zl slammed the hammer to make sure they cracked.s They said him was like playing the devil. When you think he’ll poke you in the eye with his horns, he kicks you in the balls with his hooves.

ForwardAll historical information in this novel is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge. Much of the information cited has been heatedly debated. This may well be because it is false. But it may be because we refuse to believe stories that makes us feel insecure. What a close evaluation of history teaches us is not, as the old saw goes, that history repeats itself. Instead, it is this: history will always surprise us.Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot outtheir name from under heaven: and I will makeof thee a nation mightier and greater than they.Deuteronomy 9:140.1In 1961, a group of scientists led by Dr. Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory developed an equation to predict the number of intelligent civilizations existing in our galaxy. Dubbed the Drake Equation, it accounted for seven variables.The first two variables are the least interesting: average star formation rate, about one per year, and the fraction of stars with planets, now believed to be one over one.The third variable in the equation is the first one that scientists seriously debate: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life. In our solar system, that number is no lower than 1/8. For other star systems, we can only guess. The Hubble Telescope employs a primary lens 94.5 inches wide and regularly takes exposures over twelve hours in duration, yet the sheer vastness of space prevents even the Hubble from visually identifying even planets larger than Jupiter. While the Hubble and other observatory instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect exoplanets directly, they are sensitive enough to detect tiny wobbles in the orbits of distant stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets orbiting a given star. Still, the planets themselves remain essentially invisible and scientists are left to guess at how many may be capable of supporting life. A conservative estimate is one percent.However, much of what we once assumed about life is now hopelessly false. Scientists once believed that life could thrive only within delicate parameters of temperature, water, and radiation exposure. Discoveries since the 1990s have revealed that life on earth manages to thrive even in extreme environments, including perpetually frozen areas of Antarctica and alkaline lakes in California so caustic they can dissolve human skin. Some life forms have been found surviving near deep ocean vents where water temperatures never rest below boiling. Other life forms have been discovered living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Clearly life is more ubiquitous and stubborn than we tend to believe. Which leads to the four variable: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life. All of them.While this surprises the average reader, scientists overwhelmingly agree on this point. They even have a name for this principle: biological determinism. Where life can exist, it will exist. Some scientists today even argue that no clear demarcation exists between chemistry and biology, that biology is simply an extension of chemistry. Accordingly, life will always arise whenever environmental conditions allow, just as fire will always burn when the environment contains the requisite amount of heat, oxygen, and fuel.The fifth variable recognizes the sharp distinction between life and intelligent, communicating life. Dr. Drake himself originally estimated that only one percent of life-supporting planets would produce intelligent life. Scientists today are strongly polarized, many arguing that earth is the only planet that will ever attain intelligent life while others assert that all planets that support life will eventually develop intelligent life, a sort of bio-intellectual determinism. This is not so far-fetched. The only planet we know of that can support life, developed intelligent life. As far as we know, the universe is one for one.The sixth variable is the fraction of intelligent life forms that will develop means of communication via technological means. In other words, detectable signals. Dr. Drake conservatively estimated that only one percent of intelligent civilizations would develop such technology. Using his estimates, Dr. Drake calculated the expected number of intelligent, active communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.His result: 1,000 to 100,000 in our galaxy alone. 10 Trillion in the universe.In other words, the galaxy should be teaming with intelligent life. Our predicament is that we still have not yet found any intelligent life in our galaxy. This situation is a severe problem for reasons that initially are difficult to recognize but which will rapidly become apparent.1.0The last of the horizon disappeared as night slid across the sky. Doctor Rosen rubbed his temples and took long, collected breaths. The scattered town lights below in the desert appeared identical to the stars above, making it difficult to sense whether the plane was right-side up or upside down. Rosen felt dizzy. The KC-135 he was flying in had been designed as an aerial refueler for military jets, not as a commercial airliner. As the plane passed through more rough air, Dr. Rosen’s stomach lurched, then collected itself. When the air settled again, he closed his eyes and lowered his head nearly to his knees. His breaths became long and deliberate.“We’ll be there shortly, Doctor.” The co-pilot said. “We are in Arizona airspace now. We’ll begin our descent in about fifteen minutes.”“Thank you.” Rosen managed, slowly sitting up. “Any word from Tucson?”“No, Sir. They had some kind of bug in the probe communication software. They’re working on it, should be up soon.”Rosen nodded. He gave up rubbing his head, resigned to the chiseling headache in his frontal lobe. He reached for his tablet computer and with a few gestures pulled up a map. A blue circle representing the aircraft strobed dimly on the hybrid image, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. He stared at the glowing and dimming circle, remembering the pulsing blue chests of the victims.“What?” Rosen responded. He noticed the cockpit, hundreds of dials and switches dimly glowing and rotating, and remembered where he was.“What?” the co-pilot said.“I thought you said something?”“No,” he paused. “Are you okay? I heard you breathing a bit heavy.”“Really? Nah, I’m fine, just haven’t slept for a while. Not a big fan of flying.”The co-pilot nodded while Rosen focused again on the tablet, touching the screen to awaken it. With three fingers on the glass display, he slid another window open that revealed a mathematical application. Seven letters confronted Rosen on the screen: R, fp , ne , fl , fi , fc , l. He began to enter numbers next to each variable.“You trying to calculate your chances of surviving?” the co-pilot joked.Rosen’s eyebrows crunched together momentarily, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, realizing the question was just coincidence. He let out an awkward laugh. “I get nervous flying, what can I say. Doesn’t help that we’re sitting on 180,000 pounds of jet fuel.”“Well trust me, these birds are safe. You’re more likely to win the lottery than see one of these crash.”Rosen looked back down at the tablet and touched the graph button with his right index finger. The screen morphed into a Cartesian coordinate system with dim grey vertical and horizontal bars running across and up and down the display. A sharp red line curved a path downward from left to right, steeply at first then inflecting to an increasingly shallow descent until it met the edge of the screen. Rosen placed his five fingers on the display and drew them together. As his fingers moved, the screen zoomed out to show more of the graph. Rosen scanned the diving line, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Not good.The plane touched down at Phoenix Sky Harbor ahead of schedule. Relief spread across his face when he walked off the plane onto the tarmac. He was glad to stand on a surface that did not move simultaneously along three axes. Most of the day’s flights had already landed, so the tarmac sat relatively quiet. He felt it odd to stand on reinforced cement instead of walk through a corridor to the main terminal, but the Air Force did not do commercial.Rosen aimed his face skyward through the orange blanket of lighting that covered Sky Harbor. He quickly found Venus and then Jupiter despite the light pollution. With his eyes he drew an arching line between the two planets, the ecliptic. The line guided him until he found Saturn. Rosen appreciated the Arizonan sky. Most people knew that Phoenix could go months without rain, but few outsiders realized that the city could go months without even a cloud. An astronomer’s dream.Rosen glanced at his phone to check the time. His smile faded and his foot tapped the ground over and over while the salty chemical stink from the petroleum storage slipped up his nose. The data from Pioneer XIII would start flowing as soon as Tucson got their technical bug figured out. Rosen had missed the Pioneer XII data feed before contact was lost, so he sure as Polaris would not miss Pioneer XIII when it touched down on the next exoplanet. He scrolled his phone’s directory, looking for the escort’s number. The intense stress he’d been feeling since the meeting at Langley tightened its grip on his neck and shoulder traps.Just as he tapped the button to call his escort, the black Ford Mustang pulled up, its sharp silver rims flexing in the airport light. Rosen opened the passenger door and threw himself into the seat.“About time,” Rosen said.“Easy Doc, I’m on time. Your plane arrived ahead of schedule.”“Just get me to my office.”Ten minutes later Rosen could see Sun Devil stadium growing as they neared the university. The football stadium sat wedged between the two peaks of “A Mountain.” In front of the stadium, Tempe Town Lake strolled in lazy blackness. Rosen remembered his surprise at seeing the small lake in the middle of the desert when he first arrived at Arizona State a decade ago to take a professorship. Only in the desert to people build lakes.“What’s the rush tonight?” the driver asked.“They don’t tell you?”“Nah, they just give us assignments and we do ‘em.”“Then I probably shouldn’t tell you either.”The driver rolled his eyes. He had grown accustomed to all the secrecy, but did they have to be so French about it? He turned right on University Avenue and guided the Mustang to the curb in front of the Palo Verde dorms. Rosen pushed the door out and hurriedly swung his bag around his shoulder and quickly walked off.The glass doors were still unlocked. Rosen walked into the lobby and pressed the down button by the elevators to his left. A few students walked past and exited the building. One of the astronomy labs must have just ended, Rosen thought. At least they have no idea. The elevator binged. Soon he was to his office door where he punched in his door code and scanned his badge. The thick door clunked as the heavy latch retracted. He sat down and logged into his terminal.The large LCD screen at his desk awakened. Rosen pressed a combination of keys and the backdrop image of Eugene Cernan planting the last American flag on the moon faded into a monotonous gray smear. The secure-data-link software loaded. Rosen unconsciously tapped his index finger against the desk, his eyes locked on the blue progress bar pushing its way from left to right across the screen.His phone beeped. A text message. Raw Data DL’d, Must see ASAP. Can you believe all this?? -TusconRosen focused back on the terminal screen. The progress bar was no longer moving. He hit the retry button. No response. He pounded the mouse. Still nothing. He heard the whining of his computer’s processors working, picking up desperate speed. Then they stopped, too. A message box popped up: Fatal Error. Please Restart System. Unsaved Data May Be Lost.Rosen kicked his chair, which slid a few yards across the room. He rebooted the terminal and stared at the screen as though he could intimidate it into working. He grabbed his phone and sent a message back to Tuscon, “damn tech problems.”Seconds later, his phone rang.“Hey Stephen, are you looking at this?” the voice sounded excited. Mostly.“Not yet, my junkard terminal is rebooting. I can’t believe this tonight. Hold on.” Rosen re-entered his password and re-initiated the secure-data-link.“Okay, well you won’t understand what I’m saying till you see it, but look at the body positions. They seem too... I don’t know, too similar.”“To IV?”“Just like IV. I don’t know if we can keep this one wrapped. Two in a row now.”“Wait, it’s working now.” The secure-data-link connected and the video feed from Pioneer XIII automatically opened and began playing on Rosen’s terminal. He centered his eyes on the screen. The camera panned right revealing a hazel, polluted sky. There were no clouds, just an uneasy haze. As the camera panned further, a red river became visible, slithering through the ruins. It moved quickly, probably thinner than water, Rosen thought. The carcasses looked fresh only because they weren’t carbon-based, Rosen knew this. At least they aren’t pulsing this time. No, these ones were long dead.“What do you think?” the voice on the phone asked.Rosen stared at the bleak image. “I guess we’re still alone.”The man on the phone remotely panned the camera further right and tilted it downward.“And what do you think of those?”Rosen immediately closed the call. He hit a combination of keys to save a still-frame from the data feed. What the hell was a human footprint doing there.2.0The gamer known as RaV0_zl lowered his goggles and waited to hear his name over the loudspeaker. Back in southern California, he was known as Jett Bass, but in South Korea the gaming world knew him by his enigmatic Starcraft tag, which they pronounced “Rav-oh-Zel.”In the hallway ramp that led to the tournament floor, Jett swung his arms side to side, like an American basketball player. Gaming is to Koreans what basketball is to Americans or soccer to Brazilians. Three television stations are dedicated to broadcasting gaming competitions in the only country on earth where the national sport is a computer game. In South Korea, professional Starcraft players like the legendary Lee Young-Ho and Jae-Dong are pop icons with literally millions of fans and paychecks that reach high into the six figures through prize money and sponsorships. Over one hundred and twenty thousand fans watched the 2005 SKY Pro-league championship, a Guinness world record for a pro gaming event. No where else in the world is gaming such a cultural phenomena. As gamers love to say, Korea got Seoul.Jett brought his palms together, fingers lined up, and pressed downward. He felt pressure leave his fingers as his joints popped loudly. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then lowered his goggles to his eyes. He looked over himself, dressed in a jumpsuit littered with corporate sponsors like Samsung and Ongamenet. What am I, a Nascar racer? he thought. But this was what pro gaming in South Korea had become: the digital offspring of Formula I Racing and WCW Wrestling.Boom. Fireworks launched on the other side of the entry gate and the crowd roared. Flashbulbs ignited. Jett loved this part, it made him feel like a god. The announcer shouted his name, pronouncing Bass like boss, but Jett was used to that by now. What mattered was his gamer tag. “Rav-oh-Zel” the announcer bellowed.Jett jogged out the gate, arms raised to the feverish crowd. He reached down and yanked off his goggles, then threw them into the stands where the fans erupted and dozens of hands thrusted after the goggles. If my parents had any idea.But they had none. Even while the crowd cheered, Jett felt his smile fade. They didn’t care. His dad worshipped money at the temple of Goldman Sachs. His mom knew her husband got his intimacy there, probably from the secretaries or analysts. Hell, even he knew that. But his mom was no saint herself. As long as money was deposited into her account every month, she was happy traveling the world alone and doing whatever romance-novel-addicted women do when they are single in foreign countries.Jett caught his thoughts wandering and shook them off. He walked to his computer station with a sense of purpose. The crowd loved that. They wanted to see confidence He hit a couple of keys to activate the console, then reached for his Bose noise-canceling headphones. They were as expensive as Heaven’s pearly gates, but they worked. They used a technology called active noise control. A microphone embedded on the outside of the headphones detected incoming sound waves, then a tiny processor analyzed those sound waves within nanoseconds, instructing the speakers in the headphones to emit sound waves exactly opposite of the incoming soundwaves. The compression and rarefaction waves would strike each other, canceling each other out and thereby eliminating most or all of the unwanted sounds. They were one more slight advantage.Jett adjusted himself to the custom keyboard and mouse, both designed to increase his speed when selecting and ordering his forces. Starcraft was a real-time strategy game, requiring split-second decision making and uncanny timing. Tenths of seconds made a huge difference at this level, acting as the butterfly’s wing to affect a vicious storm on the opponent. A voice spoke in his headphones asking if he were ready. He lifted a thumb up and focused on controlling his breathing. He keyed in his gamer tag and ceased to be Jett.RaV0_zl stared at the countdown. He positioned his cursor exactly where his forces would appear, a location he had memorized through endless practice. Tenths of seconds. The countdown was the most stressful part of the whole thing. He had no control over it. The time inevitably shrunk smaller and smaller until it became zero.When it did, the briefing screen zoomed away and a rotund building, resembling a circular tank without a turret, appeared on a desert landscape with four small SCV’s. He immediately ordered the small robotic units to gather resources that would build his military and fuel his conquest.The goal of Starcraft was simple: destroy the opponent. The execution was substantially more complicated. It required building a military force strong enough to overpower the enemy’s entrenched defenses, or a force quick and sly enough to undercut the enemy’s economy, forcing a surrender. Jett had risen to the top of the Starcraft universe by being the first American to win a South Korean pro tournament. His unpredictable strategies left opponents unsure of how to prepare defenses, and hesitant to commit themselves to attacks, desperately aware that Jett had made himself famous by destroying opponents with ruthless counter-attacks. He was the Sun-Tzu of Starcraft, crushing his opponents psychologically then decimating their actual forces.Jett wasted no time. He moved one of his SCV’s to scout the landscape. An advantage in time or forces meant nothing if you did not know where the enemy’s base sat or where additional resources could be found. The small, motorized unit raced across the map and quickly found the opponent’s base. Jett used the SCV to harass XBanditX’s workers, drawing his attention away from building an army. A successful harassment would buy Jett valuable seconds.Jett quickly grew his base, adding a barracks to the south to train marines and constructing a factory slightly to the west where siege tanks would be assembled and used for defense. Jett had no way of knowing that a woman named Hillary Shreaver was sitting alone in a small, highly secure office in Virginia watching his game unfold, analyzing his strategy, and scribbling notes on a legal pad. He had no idea that she knew Doctor Steven P. Rosen, and no way of knowing that she would be the woman who would kill him.---------------------------------------3.0The first two minutes passed calmly for most players, but Jett wasn’t most players. He sent one of his SCV units into the enemy base and used its weak attack to harrass and distract XbanditX. He had to while both sides built bases and trained units. Jett distracted XbanditX withThe first two minutes of the match were the calm before the storm while both sides built bases and trained units that would later be deployed against the enemy. During those two minutes, there was no way Jett could have known he was being analyzed in a small room in Virginia by the person who would kill him.his was game four of a best of five, and RaV0_zl held a 2-1 lead over XbanditX. The audience held a sort of energy that propelled RaV0_zl to perform his best. With four consecutive championship titles, his tournament record was the highest in the world. He glanced through the windows within his sound proof compartment. The audience filled the auditorium, a few dozen were standing in the back because there were no more chairs. RaV0_zl thought of what his parents were thinking. More than likely they didn’t care, actually. Dad was so busy at his law firm he never rarely came home. Mom knew her husband had long ago fallen for someone at the law firm, but she couldn’t play sunday school teacher. She had her share of extra-curricular activities. As long as she got a share of the cash, she didn’t need to put a leash on him. She just loved to travel. She’d never made time for one of these starcraft competitions. Never bothered to call and wish him good luck. Online, RaV0_zl was the equivalent of Odysseus. He had a fan club. Hell, people paid him just to watch him play. Replays of his games were the most downloaded of any professional Starcraft player in the world.He never thought he’d be on TV playing Starcraft, but Koreans adopted Starcraft as their national game like Brazilians play soccer. Their public schools even had classes in Starcraft. He’d met a girl before and asked her if she’d played starcraft before. She answered, “I’m Korean aren’t I?” Nobody realizes it, but these people are crazy. They had the digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers, experienced gamers in their own right who called the action as it unfolded. One of their voices came into his BOSE sound-cancelling headsets which kept out any noise the sound-proof room didn’t. Even with a crowd shouting and cheering fifteen feet away, RaV0_zl could hear nothing but the sounds of the game himself. The voice asked him if he were ready. He raised his thumb, his eyes never leaving the screen. A five second countdown began.Through endless hours of practice, he had memorized where his first workers would appear on the screen and had already placed his cursor there. It saved him milliseconds. He sent his four workers to gather minerals. The first minute of the game was the calmest. By minute two, things were always unease. Every player had to prepare to rush or defend a rush. RaV0_zl had decided you always had to rush. His opponents knew that, so they built defenses that would shred any early attack by weak terran marines. And because his opponents always knew he rushed, in this last game RaV0_zl did not. He saved his resources and “tech’d,” meaning he left himself exposed for a pivotal two minutes. Any early strike and he’s caught with his pants down.XbanditX played the Protoss. They were a highly advanced alien civilization with strong warriors and high technology. They had an answer for every technology the humans ever used against them. Except the siege tank and the nuke.-----------In a UA science lab in Tuscon, Jeremy Landis hit redial.“What happened?” Calvin Peters asked him. Calvin stood against the brick wall wearing tight jeans and a University of Arizona tee-shirt with a sketched wildcat“He just hung up, I don’t know.”The redial didn’t connect, but after Landis set the phone down, it rang to life.“Sorry ‘bout that Landis. I think AT&T dropped my call.”“Oh no problem,” Landis replied. He covered the bottom of the phone and looked at the techie, “It’s Rosen. He says AT&T dropped his call.”“Ah,” the tech smiled. “He’s a liar but he’s good.”Landis grinned then pulled the receiver close to his ear, nodding and saying, “right” a lot. He finally hung up the phone and looked back at Calvin. ““That virus got them bad. If that thing ever strikes earth....Put him on speaker, the tech said.“What do you think of the footprint?”“What footprint?”“The one on the ground. I showed it to you.”“Oh, that shadow?”“You think that was a shadow?”“No doubt about it. Light and shadow play funny tricks on us in the video.”“What are you talking about Rosen? That’s high resolution imagery.”“I don’t care what the resolution is, it can’t be a footprint.”“Okay, whatever. What do you think happened here?”“Some kind of virus maybe?“You think a virus can leave bruise marks?”“Basically we have no idea.”he could sense that he was being lied to.“Okay, well good luck.” he hung up the phone and looked at the Tech. I don’t know what kind of virus leavesLook Jeremy,Starcraft is the most popular real-time strategy game in the world. Set in the far future, the game allows players to select one of three races: Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. RaV0_zl always chose the Terrans. They were the game’s only human race. They had the weakest soldiers but the best machines. Machines. He chose the Terrans because he hated it when aliens, even these dinky computer game aliens, killed humans. He’d rather clear the mother f-ers out himself.RaV0_zlRaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. He cloaked them and sent them northeast near the Protoss base.Seven hundred miles northwest of Phoenix, RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. The crowd wasHe cloaked them and sent them north around the Protoss base. He made sure to fly them within range of at least one of the photon canons the other player had deployed to the middle of the map as a way to watch RaV0_zl’s troop movements. It worked. XbanditX saw the force headed for his exposed northeast base. XbanditX owned the northwest natural expansion slot, too, and hoped to spread to a third resource center. But first he’d have to stop the incoming wraiths. They were invisible except when within range of photon cannons which could detect any cloaked unit.The problem for XbanditX was that he had no cannons on the northeast corner of his main base. The fact that he’d spotted the wraiths as they passed the middle of the map gave him some lead time. He swung up the map to his main base and frantically selected a worker probe to warp in cannons. It would take 34 seconds to fully warp in. By then the wraiths would be there, so he started three even though it cost his full load of minerals. Wraiths have poor air to ground attacks, so he knew that even though they could stop one cannon from warping in, they couldn’t stop three, and once one was up the wraiths would have to retreat. The wraiths would be there in just a few seconds more. XbanditX jumped the map to his expansion and ordered the probes to warp in a cannon for defense and a couple gateways where attack units could be summoned.The wraiths arrived before any of the three cannons had finished warping. The six wraiths fired their lasers at the first cannon. XbanditX had already brought anti-air units to the scene but until the cannons were fully constructed the units were blind to the cloaked wraiths. You’re base is under attack, the computerized voice warned. The red lasers from the wraiths ended the first cannon as it hit 98% complete. No big loss, XbanditX knew that would happen. Moments later, the other two cannons finalized and started firing fiery white orbs at the attacking aircraft. The Dragoons fired their orbs, too, forcing the wraiths away. Your forces are under attack, the voice repeated.But the wraiths didn’t retreat. This was XbanditX’s first feeling that something was wrong. The wraiths kept firing though they were clearly outgunned now. Two exploded at the same time and a third fell seconds later. The other three were quickly taking serious damage. Your forces are under attack, the voice warned. And they were.blah blah, some real life starcraft game i’ve changed...he wins brilliantly.“gg.”“gg.”The applause shook the room like he’d won a basketball game at the buzzer. It took some getting used to. He’d seen this coming, but most people hadn’t. The day when video game competitions would draw crowds that watched on giant screens and cheered their favorite players, mesmerized by the speed and tactical genius. The digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers called the action. Viewers tuned in on their TV’s and literally thousands watched via the internet. It was a subculture forsure, not basketball or soccer by any exagerration, but it was a subculture millions strong across the world. A subculture of tech-savvy youth who wanted to prove they had the genius, the reflexes, and the instinct to win.RaV0_zl, like all the top players, practiced nearly eight hours a day. Professional Gaming is just like any other profession. It’s full time.He had gained a popularity on the web. They joked he was “Iceman” because he didn’t make mistakes. He waited for his opponent to misstep, and then he snapped in like a serpent and ripped the digital life out of his opponents...They joked he was the “psychologist” because he played mind games. The saying went that to beat RaV0_zl you had to beat him on the game and beat him mentally. No one ever beat him mentally though. He had losses on his record. Inevitable when you play hundreds of matches a year. But he was perfect in every title game he’d been in. When the stress nearly cracked opponents, RaV0_zl slammed the hammer to make sure they cracked.sThey said him was like playing the devil. When you think he’ll poke you in the eye with his horns, he kicks you in the balls with his hooves.ForwardAll historical information in this novel is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge. Much of the information cited has been heatedly debated. This may well be because it is false. But it may be because we refuse to believe stories that makes us feel insecure. What a close evaluation of history teaches us is not, as the old saw goes, that history repeats itself. Instead, it is this: history will always surprise us.
Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.Deuteronomy 9:140.1 In 1961, a group of scientists led by Dr. Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory developed an equation to predict the number of intelligent civilizations existing in our galaxy. Dubbed the Drake Equation, it accounted for seven variables. The first two variables are the least interesting: average star formation rate, about one per year, and the fraction of stars with planets, now believed to be one over one. The third variable in the equation is the first one that scientists seriously debate: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life. In our solar system, that number is no lower than 1/8. For other star systems, we can only guess. The Hubble Telescope employs a primary lens 94.5 inches wide and regularly takes exposures over twelve hours in duration, yet the sheer vastness of space prevents even the Hubble from visually identifying even planets larger than Jupiter. While the Hubble and other observatory instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect exoplanets directly, they are sensitive enough to detect tiny wobbles in the orbits of distant stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets orbiting a given star. Still, the planets themselves remain essentially invisible and scientists are left to guess at how many may be capable of supporting life. A conservative estimate is one percent. However, much of what we once assumed about life is now hopelessly false. Scientists once believed that life could thrive only within delicate parameters of temperature, water, and radiation exposure. Discoveries since the 1990s have revealed that life on earth manages to thrive even in extreme environments, including perpetually frozen areas of Antarctica and alkaline lakes in California so caustic they can dissolve human skin. Some life forms have been found surviving near deep ocean vents where water temperatures never rest below boiling. Other life forms have been discovered living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Clearly life is more ubiquitous and stubborn than we tend to believe. Which leads to the four variable: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life. All of them. While this surprises the average reader, scientists overwhelmingly agree on this point. They even have a name for this principle: biological determinism. Where life can exist, it will exist. Some scientists today even argue that no clear demarcation exists between chemistry and biology, that biology is simply an extension of chemistry. Accordingly, life will always arise whenever environmental conditions allow, just as fire will always burn when the environment contains the requisite amount of heat, oxygen, and fuel. The fifth variable recognizes the sharp distinction between life and intelligent, communicating life. Dr. Drake himself originally estimated that only one percent of life-supporting planets would produce intelligent life. Scientists today are strongly polarized, many arguing that earth is the only planet that will ever attain intelligent life while others assert that all planets that support life will eventually develop intelligent life, a sort of bio-intellectual determinism. This is not so far-fetched. The only planet we know of that can support life, developed intelligent life. As far as we know, the universe is one for one. The sixth variable is the fraction of intelligent life forms that will develop means of communication via technological means. In other words, detectable signals. Dr. Drake conservatively estimated that only one percent of intelligent civilizations would develop such technology. Using his estimates, Dr. Drake calculated the expected number of intelligent, active communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. His result: 1,000 to 100,000 in our galaxy alone. 10 Trillion in the universe. In other words, the galaxy should be teaming with intelligent life. Our predicament is that we still have not yet found any intelligent life in our galaxy. This situation is a severe problem for reasons that initially are difficult to recognize but which will rapidly become apparent.1.0 The last of the horizon disappeared as night slid across the sky. Doctor Rosen rubbed his temples and took long, collected breaths. The scattered town lights below in the desert appeared identical to the stars above, making it difficult to sense whether the plane was right-side up or upside down. Rosen felt dizzy. The KC-135 he was flying in had been designed as an aerial refueler for military jets, not as a commercial airliner. As the plane passed through more rough air, Dr. Rosen’s stomach lurched, then collected itself. When the air settled again, he closed his eyes and lowered his head nearly to his knees. His breaths became long and deliberate. “We’ll be there shortly, Doctor.” The co-pilot said. “We are in Arizona airspace now. We’ll begin our descent in about fifteen minutes.” “Thank you.” Rosen managed, slowly sitting up. “Any word from Tucson?” “No, Sir. They had some kind of bug in the probe communication software. They’re working on it, should be up soon.” Rosen nodded. He gave up rubbing his head, resigned to the chiseling headache in his frontal lobe. He reached for his tablet computer and with a few gestures pulled up a map. A blue circle representing the aircraft strobed dimly on the hybrid image, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. He stared at the glowing and dimming circle, remembering the pulsing blue chests of the victims. “What?” Rosen responded. He noticed the cockpit, hundreds of dials and switches dimly glowing and rotating, and remembered where he was. “What?” the co-pilot said. “I thought you said something?” “No,” he paused. “Are you okay? I heard you breathing a bit heavy.” “Really? Nah, I’m fine, just haven’t slept for a while. Not a big fan of flying.” The co-pilot nodded while Rosen focused again on the tablet, touching the screen to awaken it. With three fingers on the glass display, he slid another window open that revealed a mathematical application. Seven letters confronted Rosen on the screen: R, fp , ne , fl , fi , fc , l. He began to enter numbers next to each variable. “You trying to calculate your chances of surviving?” the co-pilot joked. Rosen’s eyebrows crunched together momentarily, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, realizing the question was just coincidence. He let out an awkward laugh. “I get nervous flying, what can I say. Doesn’t help that we’re sitting on 180,000 pounds of jet fuel.” “Well trust me, these birds are safe. You’re more likely to win the lottery than see one of these crash.” Rosen looked back down at the tablet and touched the graph button with his right index finger. The screen morphed into a Cartesian coordinate system with dim grey vertical and horizontal bars running across and up and down the display. A sharp red line curved a path downward from left to right, steeply at first then inflecting to an increasingly shallow descent until it met the edge of the screen. Rosen placed his five fingers on the display and drew them together. As his fingers moved, the screen zoomed out to show more of the graph. Rosen scanned the diving line, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Not good.The plane touched down at Phoenix Sky Harbor ahead of schedule. Relief spread across his face when he walked off the plane onto the tarmac. He was glad to stand on a surface that did not move simultaneously along three axes. Most of the day’s flights had already landed, so the tarmac sat relatively quiet. He felt it odd to stand on reinforced cement instead of walk through a corridor to the main terminal, but the Air Force did not do commercial. Rosen aimed his face skyward through the orange blanket of lighting that covered Sky Harbor. He quickly found Venus and then Jupiter despite the light pollution. With his eyes he drew an arching line between the two planets, the ecliptic. The line guided him until he found Saturn. Rosen appreciated the Arizonan sky. Most people knew that Phoenix could go months without rain, but few outsiders realized that the city could go months without even a cloud. An astronomer’s dream. Rosen glanced at his phone to check the time. His smile faded and his foot tapped the ground over and over while the salty chemical stink from the petroleum storage slipped up his nose. The data from Pioneer XIII would start flowing as soon as Tucson got their technical bug figured out. Rosen had missed the Pioneer XII data feed before contact was lost, so he sure as Polaris would not miss Pioneer XIII when it touched down on the next exoplanet. He scrolled his phone’s directory, looking for the escort’s number. The intense stress he’d been feeling since the meeting at Langley tightened its grip on his neck and shoulder traps. Just as he tapped the button to call his escort, the black Ford Mustang pulled up, its sharp silver rims flexing in the airport light. Rosen opened the passenger door and threw himself into the seat. “About time,” Rosen said. “Easy Doc, I’m on time. Your plane arrived ahead of schedule.” “Just get me to my office.” Ten minutes later Rosen could see Sun Devil stadium growing as they neared the university. The football stadium sat wedged between the two peaks of “A Mountain.” In front of the stadium, Tempe Town Lake strolled in lazy blackness. Rosen remembered his surprise at seeing the small lake in the middle of the desert when he first arrived at Arizona State a decade ago to take a professorship. Only in the desert to people build lakes. “What’s the rush tonight?” the driver asked. “They don’t tell you?” “Nah, they just give us assignments and we do ‘em.” “Then I probably shouldn’t tell you either.” The driver rolled his eyes. He had grown accustomed to all the secrecy, but did they have to be so French about it? He turned right on University Avenue and guided the Mustang to the curb in front of the Palo Verde dorms. Rosen pushed the door out and hurriedly swung his bag around his shoulder and quickly walked off. The glass doors were still unlocked. Rosen walked into the lobby and pressed the down button by the elevators to his left. A few students walked past and exited the building. One of the astronomy labs must have just ended, Rosen thought. At least they have no idea. The elevator binged. Soon he was to his office door where he punched in his door code and scanned his badge. The thick door clunked as the heavy latch retracted. He sat down and logged into his terminal. The large LCD screen at his desk awakened. Rosen pressed a combination of keys and the backdrop image of Eugene Cernan planting the last American flag on the moon faded into a monotonous gray smear. The secure-data-link software loaded. Rosen unconsciously tapped his index finger against the desk, his eyes locked on the blue progress bar pushing its way from left to right across the screen. His phone beeped. A text message. Raw Data DL’d, Must see ASAP. Can you believe all this?? -Tuscon Rosen focused back on the terminal screen. The progress bar was no longer moving. He hit the retry button. No response. He pounded the mouse. Still nothing. He heard the whining of his computer’s processors working, picking up desperate speed. Then they stopped, too. A message box popped up: Fatal Error. Please Restart System. Unsaved Data May Be Lost. Rosen kicked his chair, which slid a few yards across the room. He rebooted the terminal and stared at the screen as though he could intimidate it into working. He grabbed his phone and sent a message back to Tuscon, “damn tech problems.” Seconds later, his phone rang. “Hey Stephen, are you looking at this?” the voice sounded excited. Mostly. “Not yet, my junkard terminal is rebooting. I can’t believe this tonight. Hold on.” Rosen re-entered his password and re-initiated the secure-data-link. “Okay, well you won’t understand what I’m saying till you see it, but look at the body positions. They seem too... I don’t know, too similar.” “To IV?” “Just like IV. I don’t know if we can keep this one wrapped. Two in a row now.” “Wait, it’s working now.” The secure-data-link connected and the video feed from Pioneer XIII automatically opened and began playing on Rosen’s terminal. He centered his eyes on the screen. The camera panned right revealing a hazel, polluted sky. There were no clouds, just an uneasy haze. As the camera panned further, a red river became visible, slithering through the ruins. It moved quickly, probably thinner than water, Rosen thought. The carcasses looked fresh only because they weren’t carbon-based, Rosen knew this. At least they aren’t pulsing this time. No, these ones were long dead. “What do you think?” the voice on the phone asked. Rosen stared at the bleak image. “I guess we’re still alone.” The man on the phone remotely panned the camera further right and tilted it downward. “And what do you think of those?” Rosen immediately closed the call. He hit a combination of keys to save a still-frame from the data feed. What the hell was a human footprint doing there.2.0 The gamer known as RaV0_zl lowered his goggles and waited to hear his name over the loudspeaker. Back in southern California, he was known as Jett Bass, but in South Korea the gaming world knew him by his enigmatic Starcraft tag, which they pronounced “Rav-oh-Zel.” In the hallway ramp that led to the tournament floor, Jett swung his arms side to side, like an American basketball player. Gaming is to Koreans what basketball is to Americans or soccer to Brazilians. Three television stations are dedicated to broadcasting gaming competitions in the only country on earth where the national sport is a computer game. In South Korea, professional Starcraft players like the legendary Lee Young-Ho and Jae-Dong are pop icons with literally millions of fans and paychecks that reach high into the six figures through prize money and sponsorships. Over one hundred and twenty thousand fans watched the 2005 SKY Pro-league championship, a Guinness world record for a pro gaming event. No where else in the world is gaming such a cultural phenomena. As gamers love to say, Korea got Seoul. Jett brought his palms together, fingers lined up, and pressed downward. He felt pressure leave his fingers as his joints popped loudly. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then lowered his goggles to his eyes. He looked over himself, dressed in a jumpsuit littered with corporate sponsors like Samsung and Ongamenet. What am I, a Nascar racer? he thought. But this was what pro gaming in South Korea had become: the digital offspring of Formula I Racing and WCW Wrestling. Boom. Fireworks launched on the other side of the entry gate and the crowd roared. Flashbulbs ignited. Jett loved this part, it made him feel like a god. The announcer shouted his name, pronouncing Bass like boss, but Jett was used to that by now. What mattered was his gamer tag. “Rav-oh-Zel” the announcer bellowed. Jett jogged out the gate, arms raised to the feverish crowd. He reached down and yanked off his goggles, then threw them into the stands where the fans erupted and dozens of hands thrusted after the goggles. If my parents had any idea. But they had none. Even while the crowd cheered, Jett felt his smile fade. They didn’t care. His dad worshipped money at the temple of Goldman Sachs. His mom knew her husband got his intimacy there, probably from the secretaries or analysts. Hell, even he knew that. But his mom was no saint herself. As long as money was deposited into her account every month, she was happy traveling the world alone and doing whatever romance-novel-addicted women do when they are single in foreign countries. Jett caught his thoughts wandering and shook them off. He walked to his computer station with a sense of purpose. The crowd loved that. They wanted to see confidence He hit a couple of keys to activate the console, then reached for his Bose noise-canceling headphones. They were as expensive as Heaven’s pearly gates, but they worked. They used a technology called active noise control. A microphone embedded on the outside of the headphones detected incoming sound waves, then a tiny processor analyzed those sound waves within nanoseconds, instructing the speakers in the headphones to emit sound waves exactly opposite of the incoming soundwaves. The compression and rarefaction waves would strike each other, canceling each other out and thereby eliminating most or all of the unwanted sounds. They were one more slight advantage. Jett adjusted himself to the custom keyboard and mouse, both designed to increase his speed when selecting and ordering his forces. Starcraft was a real-time strategy game, requiring split-second decision making and uncanny timing. Tenths of seconds made a huge difference at this level, acting as the butterfly’s wing to affect a vicious storm on the opponent. A voice spoke in his headphones asking if he were ready. He lifted a thumb up and focused on controlling his breathing. He keyed in his gamer tag and ceased to be Jett. RaV0_zl stared at the countdown. He positioned his cursor exactly where his forces would appear, a location he had memorized through endless practice. Tenths of seconds. The countdown was the most stressful part of the whole thing. He had no control over it. The time inevitably shrunk smaller and smaller until it became zero. When it did, the briefing screen zoomed away and a rotund building, resembling a circular tank without a turret, appeared on a desert landscape with four small SCV’s. He immediately ordered the small robotic units to gather resources that would build his military and fuel his conquest. The goal of Starcraft was simple: destroy the opponent. The execution was substantially more complicated. It required building a military force strong enough to overpower the enemy’s entrenched defenses, or a force quick and sly enough to undercut the enemy’s economy, forcing a surrender. Jett had risen to the top of the Starcraft universe by being the first American to win a South Korean pro tournament. His unpredictable strategies left opponents unsure of how to prepare defenses, and hesitant to commit themselves to attacks, desperately aware that Jett had made himself famous by destroying opponents with ruthless counter-attacks. He was the Sun-Tzu of Starcraft, crushing his opponents psychologically then decimating their actual forces. Jett wasted no time. He moved one of his SCV’s to scout the landscape. An advantage in time or forces meant nothing if you did not know where the enemy’s base sat or where additional resources could be found. The small, motorized unit raced across the map and quickly found the opponent’s base. Jett used the SCV to harass XBanditX’s workers, drawing his attention away from building an army. A successful harassment would buy Jett valuable seconds. Jett quickly grew his base, adding a barracks to the south to train marines and constructing a factory slightly to the west where siege tanks would be assembled and used for defense. Jett had no way of knowing that a woman named Hillary Shreaver was sitting alone in a small, highly secure office in Virginia watching his game unfold, analyzing his strategy, and scribbling notes on a legal pad. He had no idea that she knew Doctor Steven P. Rosen, and no way of knowing that she would be the woman who would kill him.---------------------------------------3.0
The first two minutes passed calmly for most players, but Jett wasn’t most players. He sent one of his SCV units into the enemy base and used its weak attack to harrass and distract XbanditX. He had to while both sides built bases and trained units. Jett distracted XbanditX with The first two minutes of the match were the calm before the storm while both sides built bases and trained units that would later be deployed against the enemy. During those two minutes, there was no way Jett could have known he was being analyzed in a small room in Virginia by the person who would kill him.
his was game four of a best of five, and RaV0_zl held a 2-1 lead over XbanditX. The audience held a sort of energy that propelled RaV0_zl to perform his best. With four consecutive championship titles, his tournament record was the highest in the world. He glanced through the windows within his sound proof compartment. The audience filled the auditorium, a few dozen were standing in the back because there were no more chairs. RaV0_zl thought of what his parents were thinking. More than likely they didn’t care, actually. Dad was so busy at his law firm he never rarely came home. Mom knew her husband had long ago fallen for someone at the law firm, but she couldn’t play sunday school teacher. She had her share of extra-curricular activities. As long as she got a share of the cash, she didn’t need to put a leash on him. She just loved to travel. She’d never made time for one of these starcraft competitions. Never bothered to call and wish him good luck. Online, RaV0_zl was the equivalent of Odysseus. He had a fan club. Hell, people paid him just to watch him play. Replays of his games were the most downloaded of any professional Starcraft player in the world. He never thought he’d be on TV playing Starcraft, but Koreans adopted Starcraft as their national game like Brazilians play soccer. Their public schools even had classes in Starcraft. He’d met a girl before and asked her if she’d played starcraft before. She answered, “I’m Korean aren’t I?” Nobody realizes it, but these people are crazy. They had the digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers, experienced gamers in their own right who called the action as it unfolded. One of their voices came into his BOSE sound-cancelling headsets which kept out any noise the sound-proof room didn’t. Even with a crowd shouting and cheering fifteen feet away, RaV0_zl could hear nothing but the sounds of the game himself. The voice asked him if he were ready. He raised his thumb, his eyes never leaving the screen. A five second countdown began. Through endless hours of practice, he had memorized where his first workers would appear on the screen and had already placed his cursor there. It saved him milliseconds. He sent his four workers to gather minerals. The first minute of the game was the calmest. By minute two, things were always unease. Every player had to prepare to rush or defend a rush. RaV0_zl had decided you always had to rush. His opponents knew that, so they built defenses that would shred any early attack by weak terran marines. And because his opponents always knew he rushed, in this last game RaV0_zl did not. He saved his resources and “tech’d,” meaning he left himself exposed for a pivotal two minutes. Any early strike and he’s caught with his pants down. XbanditX played the Protoss. They were a highly advanced alien civilization with strong warriors and high technology. They had an answer for every technology the humans ever used against them. Except the siege tank and the nuke. ----------- In a UA science lab in Tuscon, Jeremy Landis hit redial. “What happened?” Calvin Peters asked him. Calvin stood against the brick wall wearing tight jeans and a University of Arizona tee-shirt with a sketched wildcat “He just hung up, I don’t know.” The redial didn’t connect, but after Landis set the phone down, it rang to life.“Sorry ‘bout that Landis. I think AT&T dropped my call.” “Oh no problem,” Landis replied. He covered the bottom of the phone and looked at the techie, “It’s Rosen. He says AT&T dropped his call.” “Ah,” the tech smiled. “He’s a liar but he’s good.” Landis grinned then pulled the receiver close to his ear, nodding and saying, “right” a lot. He finally hung up the phone and looked back at Calvin. ““That virus got them bad. If that thing ever strikes earth.... Put him on speaker, the tech said. “What do you think of the footprint?” “What footprint?” “The one on the ground. I showed it to you.” “Oh, that shadow?” “You think that was a shadow?” “No doubt about it. Light and shadow play funny tricks on us in the video.” “What are you talking about Rosen? That’s high resolution imagery.” “I don’t care what the resolution is, it can’t be a footprint.” “Okay, whatever. What do you think happened here?” “Some kind of virus maybe? “You think a virus can leave bruise marks?” “Basically we have no idea.” he could sense that he was being lied to. “Okay, well good luck.” he hung up the phone and looked at the Tech. I don’t know what kind of virus leavesLook Jeremy,
Starcraft is the most popular real-time strategy game in the world. Set in the far future, the game allows players to select one of three races: Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. RaV0_zl always chose the Terrans. They were the game’s only human race. They had the weakest soldiers but the best machines. Machines. He chose the Terrans because he hated it when aliens, even these dinky computer game aliens, killed humans. He’d rather clear the mother f-ers out himself. RaV0_zl RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. He cloaked them and sent them northeast near the Protoss base.Seven hundred miles northwest of Phoenix, RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. The crowd was
He cloaked them and sent them north around the Protoss base. He made sure to fly them within range of at least one of the photon canons the other player had deployed to the middle of the map as a way to watch RaV0_zl’s troop movements. It worked. XbanditX saw the force headed for his exposed northeast base. XbanditX owned the northwest natural expansion slot, too, and hoped to spread to a third resource center. But first he’d have to stop the incoming wraiths. They were invisible except when within range of photon cannons which could detect any cloaked unit. The problem for XbanditX was that he had no cannons on the northeast corner of his main base. The fact that he’d spotted the wraiths as they passed the middle of the map gave him some lead time. He swung up the map to his main base and frantically selected a worker probe to warp in cannons. It would take 34 seconds to fully warp in. By then the wraiths would be there, so he started three even though it cost his full load of minerals. Wraiths have poor air to ground attacks, so he knew that even though they could stop one cannon from warping in, they couldn’t stop three, and once one was up the wraiths would have to retreat. The wraiths would be there in just a few seconds more. XbanditX jumped the map to his expansion and ordered the probes to warp in a cannon for defense and a couple gateways where attack units could be summoned. The wraiths arrived before any of the three cannons had finished warping. The six wraiths fired their lasers at the first cannon. XbanditX had already brought anti-air units to the scene but until the cannons were fully constructed the units were blind to the cloaked wraiths. You’re base is under attack, the computerized voice warned. The red lasers from the wraiths ended the first cannon as it hit 98% complete. No big loss, XbanditX knew that would happen. Moments later, the other two cannons finalized and started firing fiery white orbs at the attacking aircraft. The Dragoons fired their orbs, too, forcing the wraiths away. Your forces are under attack, the voice repeated. But the wraiths didn’t retreat. This was XbanditX’s first feeling that something was wrong. The wraiths kept firing though they were clearly outgunned now. Two exploded at the same time and a third fell seconds later. The other three were quickly taking serious damage. Your forces are under attack, the voice warned. And they were.
blah blah, some real life starcraft game i’ve changed... he wins brilliantly. “gg.” “gg.” The applause shook the room like he’d won a basketball game at the buzzer. It took some getting used to. He’d seen this coming, but most people hadn’t. The day when video game competitions would draw crowds that watched on giant screens and cheered their favorite players, mesmerized by the speed and tactical genius. The digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers called the action. Viewers tuned in on their TV’s and literally thousands watched via the internet. It was a subculture forsure, not basketball or soccer by any exagerration, but it was a subculture millions strong across the world. A subculture of tech-savvy youth who wanted to prove they had the genius, the reflexes, and the instinct to win. RaV0_zl, like all the top players, practiced nearly eight hours a day. Professional Gaming is just like any other profession. It’s full time. He had gained a popularity on the web. They joked he was “Iceman” because he didn’t make mistakes. He waited for his opponent to misstep, and then he snapped in like a serpent and ripped the digital life out of his opponents. ..They joked he was the “psychologist” because he played mind games. The saying went that to beat RaV0_zl you had to beat him on the game and beat him mentally. No one ever beat him mentally though. He had losses on his record. Inevitable when you play hundreds of matches a year. But he was perfect in every title game he’d been in. When the stress nearly cracked opponents, RaV0_zl slammed the hammer to make sure they cracked.s They said him was like playing the devil. When you think he’ll poke you in the eye with his horns, he kicks you in the balls with his hooves.

ForwardAll historical information in this novel is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge. Much of the information cited has been heatedly debated. This may well be because it is false. But it may be because we refuse to believe stories that makes us feel insecure. What a close evaluation of history teaches us is not, as the old saw goes, that history repeats itself. Instead, it is this: history will always surprise us.Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot outtheir name from under heaven: and I will makeof thee a nation mightier and greater than they.Deuteronomy 9:140.1In 1961, a group of scientists led by Dr. Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory developed an equation to predict the number of intelligent civilizations existing in our galaxy. Dubbed the Drake Equation, it accounted for seven variables.The first two variables are the least interesting: average star formation rate, about one per year, and the fraction of stars with planets, now believed to be one over one.The third variable in the equation is the first one that scientists seriously debate: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life. In our solar system, that number is no lower than 1/8. For other star systems, we can only guess. The Hubble Telescope employs a primary lens 94.5 inches wide and regularly takes exposures over twelve hours in duration, yet the sheer vastness of space prevents even the Hubble from visually identifying even planets larger than Jupiter. While the Hubble and other observatory instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect exoplanets directly, they are sensitive enough to detect tiny wobbles in the orbits of distant stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets orbiting a given star. Still, the planets themselves remain essentially invisible and scientists are left to guess at how many may be capable of supporting life. A conservative estimate is one percent.However, much of what we once assumed about life is now hopelessly false. Scientists once believed that life could thrive only within delicate parameters of temperature, water, and radiation exposure. Discoveries since the 1990s have revealed that life on earth manages to thrive even in extreme environments, including perpetually frozen areas of Antarctica and alkaline lakes in California so caustic they can dissolve human skin. Some life forms have been found surviving near deep ocean vents where water temperatures never rest below boiling. Other life forms have been discovered living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Clearly life is more ubiquitous and stubborn than we tend to believe. Which leads to the four variable: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life. All of them.While this surprises the average reader, scientists overwhelmingly agree on this point. They even have a name for this principle: biological determinism. Where life can exist, it will exist. Some scientists today even argue that no clear demarcation exists between chemistry and biology, that biology is simply an extension of chemistry. Accordingly, life will always arise whenever environmental conditions allow, just as fire will always burn when the environment contains the requisite amount of heat, oxygen, and fuel.The fifth variable recognizes the sharp distinction between life and intelligent, communicating life. Dr. Drake himself originally estimated that only one percent of life-supporting planets would produce intelligent life. Scientists today are strongly polarized, many arguing that earth is the only planet that will ever attain intelligent life while others assert that all planets that support life will eventually develop intelligent life, a sort of bio-intellectual determinism. This is not so far-fetched. The only planet we know of that can support life, developed intelligent life. As far as we know, the universe is one for one.The sixth variable is the fraction of intelligent life forms that will develop means of communication via technological means. In other words, detectable signals. Dr. Drake conservatively estimated that only one percent of intelligent civilizations would develop such technology. Using his estimates, Dr. Drake calculated the expected number of intelligent, active communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.His result: 1,000 to 100,000 in our galaxy alone. 10 Trillion in the universe.In other words, the galaxy should be teaming with intelligent life. Our predicament is that we still have not yet found any intelligent life in our galaxy. This situation is a severe problem for reasons that initially are difficult to recognize but which will rapidly become apparent.1.0The last of the horizon disappeared as night slid across the sky. Doctor Rosen rubbed his temples and took long, collected breaths. The scattered town lights below in the desert appeared identical to the stars above, making it difficult to sense whether the plane was right-side up or upside down. Rosen felt dizzy. The KC-135 he was flying in had been designed as an aerial refueler for military jets, not as a commercial airliner. As the plane passed through more rough air, Dr. Rosen’s stomach lurched, then collected itself. When the air settled again, he closed his eyes and lowered his head nearly to his knees. His breaths became long and deliberate.“We’ll be there shortly, Doctor.” The co-pilot said. “We are in Arizona airspace now. We’ll begin our descent in about fifteen minutes.”“Thank you.” Rosen managed, slowly sitting up. “Any word from Tucson?”“No, Sir. They had some kind of bug in the probe communication software. They’re working on it, should be up soon.”Rosen nodded. He gave up rubbing his head, resigned to the chiseling headache in his frontal lobe. He reached for his tablet computer and with a few gestures pulled up a map. A blue circle representing the aircraft strobed dimly on the hybrid image, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. He stared at the glowing and dimming circle, remembering the pulsing blue chests of the victims.“What?” Rosen responded. He noticed the cockpit, hundreds of dials and switches dimly glowing and rotating, and remembered where he was.“What?” the co-pilot said.“I thought you said something?”“No,” he paused. “Are you okay? I heard you breathing a bit heavy.”“Really? Nah, I’m fine, just haven’t slept for a while. Not a big fan of flying.”The co-pilot nodded while Rosen focused again on the tablet, touching the screen to awaken it. With three fingers on the glass display, he slid another window open that revealed a mathematical application. Seven letters confronted Rosen on the screen: R, fp , ne , fl , fi , fc , l. He began to enter numbers next to each variable.“You trying to calculate your chances of surviving?” the co-pilot joked.Rosen’s eyebrows crunched together momentarily, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, realizing the question was just coincidence. He let out an awkward laugh. “I get nervous flying, what can I say. Doesn’t help that we’re sitting on 180,000 pounds of jet fuel.”“Well trust me, these birds are safe. You’re more likely to win the lottery than see one of these crash.”Rosen looked back down at the tablet and touched the graph button with his right index finger. The screen morphed into a Cartesian coordinate system with dim grey vertical and horizontal bars running across and up and down the display. A sharp red line curved a path downward from left to right, steeply at first then inflecting to an increasingly shallow descent until it met the edge of the screen. Rosen placed his five fingers on the display and drew them together. As his fingers moved, the screen zoomed out to show more of the graph. Rosen scanned the diving line, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Not good.The plane touched down at Phoenix Sky Harbor ahead of schedule. Relief spread across his face when he walked off the plane onto the tarmac. He was glad to stand on a surface that did not move simultaneously along three axes. Most of the day’s flights had already landed, so the tarmac sat relatively quiet. He felt it odd to stand on reinforced cement instead of walk through a corridor to the main terminal, but the Air Force did not do commercial.Rosen aimed his face skyward through the orange blanket of lighting that covered Sky Harbor. He quickly found Venus and then Jupiter despite the light pollution. With his eyes he drew an arching line between the two planets, the ecliptic. The line guided him until he found Saturn. Rosen appreciated the Arizonan sky. Most people knew that Phoenix could go months without rain, but few outsiders realized that the city could go months without even a cloud. An astronomer’s dream.Rosen glanced at his phone to check the time. His smile faded and his foot tapped the ground over and over while the salty chemical stink from the petroleum storage slipped up his nose. The data from Pioneer XIII would start flowing as soon as Tucson got their technical bug figured out. Rosen had missed the Pioneer XII data feed before contact was lost, so he sure as Polaris would not miss Pioneer XIII when it touched down on the next exoplanet. He scrolled his phone’s directory, looking for the escort’s number. The intense stress he’d been feeling since the meeting at Langley tightened its grip on his neck and shoulder traps.Just as he tapped the button to call his escort, the black Ford Mustang pulled up, its sharp silver rims flexing in the airport light. Rosen opened the passenger door and threw himself into the seat.“About time,” Rosen said.“Easy Doc, I’m on time. Your plane arrived ahead of schedule.”“Just get me to my office.”Ten minutes later Rosen could see Sun Devil stadium growing as they neared the university. The football stadium sat wedged between the two peaks of “A Mountain.” In front of the stadium, Tempe Town Lake strolled in lazy blackness. Rosen remembered his surprise at seeing the small lake in the middle of the desert when he first arrived at Arizona State a decade ago to take a professorship. Only in the desert to people build lakes.“What’s the rush tonight?” the driver asked.“They don’t tell you?”“Nah, they just give us assignments and we do ‘em.”“Then I probably shouldn’t tell you either.”The driver rolled his eyes. He had grown accustomed to all the secrecy, but did they have to be so French about it? He turned right on University Avenue and guided the Mustang to the curb in front of the Palo Verde dorms. Rosen pushed the door out and hurriedly swung his bag around his shoulder and quickly walked off.The glass doors were still unlocked. Rosen walked into the lobby and pressed the down button by the elevators to his left. A few students walked past and exited the building. One of the astronomy labs must have just ended, Rosen thought. At least they have no idea. The elevator binged. Soon he was to his office door where he punched in his door code and scanned his badge. The thick door clunked as the heavy latch retracted. He sat down and logged into his terminal.The large LCD screen at his desk awakened. Rosen pressed a combination of keys and the backdrop image of Eugene Cernan planting the last American flag on the moon faded into a monotonous gray smear. The secure-data-link software loaded. Rosen unconsciously tapped his index finger against the desk, his eyes locked on the blue progress bar pushing its way from left to right across the screen.His phone beeped. A text message. Raw Data DL’d, Must see ASAP. Can you believe all this?? -TusconRosen focused back on the terminal screen. The progress bar was no longer moving. He hit the retry button. No response. He pounded the mouse. Still nothing. He heard the whining of his computer’s processors working, picking up desperate speed. Then they stopped, too. A message box popped up: Fatal Error. Please Restart System. Unsaved Data May Be Lost.Rosen kicked his chair, which slid a few yards across the room. He rebooted the terminal and stared at the screen as though he could intimidate it into working. He grabbed his phone and sent a message back to Tuscon, “damn tech problems.”Seconds later, his phone rang.“Hey Stephen, are you looking at this?” the voice sounded excited. Mostly.“Not yet, my junkard terminal is rebooting. I can’t believe this tonight. Hold on.” Rosen re-entered his password and re-initiated the secure-data-link.“Okay, well you won’t understand what I’m saying till you see it, but look at the body positions. They seem too... I don’t know, too similar.”“To IV?”“Just like IV. I don’t know if we can keep this one wrapped. Two in a row now.”“Wait, it’s working now.” The secure-data-link connected and the video feed from Pioneer XIII automatically opened and began playing on Rosen’s terminal. He centered his eyes on the screen. The camera panned right revealing a hazel, polluted sky. There were no clouds, just an uneasy haze. As the camera panned further, a red river became visible, slithering through the ruins. It moved quickly, probably thinner than water, Rosen thought. The carcasses looked fresh only because they weren’t carbon-based, Rosen knew this. At least they aren’t pulsing this time. No, these ones were long dead.“What do you think?” the voice on the phone asked.Rosen stared at the bleak image. “I guess we’re still alone.”The man on the phone remotely panned the camera further right and tilted it downward.“And what do you think of those?”Rosen immediately closed the call. He hit a combination of keys to save a still-frame from the data feed. What the hell was a human footprint doing there.2.0The gamer known as RaV0_zl lowered his goggles and waited to hear his name over the loudspeaker. Back in southern California, he was known as Jett Bass, but in South Korea the gaming world knew him by his enigmatic Starcraft tag, which they pronounced “Rav-oh-Zel.”In the hallway ramp that led to the tournament floor, Jett swung his arms side to side, like an American basketball player. Gaming is to Koreans what basketball is to Americans or soccer to Brazilians. Three television stations are dedicated to broadcasting gaming competitions in the only country on earth where the national sport is a computer game. In South Korea, professional Starcraft players like the legendary Lee Young-Ho and Jae-Dong are pop icons with literally millions of fans and paychecks that reach high into the six figures through prize money and sponsorships. Over one hundred and twenty thousand fans watched the 2005 SKY Pro-league championship, a Guinness world record for a pro gaming event. No where else in the world is gaming such a cultural phenomena. As gamers love to say, Korea got Seoul.Jett brought his palms together, fingers lined up, and pressed downward. He felt pressure leave his fingers as his joints popped loudly. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then lowered his goggles to his eyes. He looked over himself, dressed in a jumpsuit littered with corporate sponsors like Samsung and Ongamenet. What am I, a Nascar racer? he thought. But this was what pro gaming in South Korea had become: the digital offspring of Formula I Racing and WCW Wrestling.Boom. Fireworks launched on the other side of the entry gate and the crowd roared. Flashbulbs ignited. Jett loved this part, it made him feel like a god. The announcer shouted his name, pronouncing Bass like boss, but Jett was used to that by now. What mattered was his gamer tag. “Rav-oh-Zel” the announcer bellowed.Jett jogged out the gate, arms raised to the feverish crowd. He reached down and yanked off his goggles, then threw them into the stands where the fans erupted and dozens of hands thrusted after the goggles. If my parents had any idea.But they had none. Even while the crowd cheered, Jett felt his smile fade. They didn’t care. His dad worshipped money at the temple of Goldman Sachs. His mom knew her husband got his intimacy there, probably from the secretaries or analysts. Hell, even he knew that. But his mom was no saint herself. As long as money was deposited into her account every month, she was happy traveling the world alone and doing whatever romance-novel-addicted women do when they are single in foreign countries.Jett caught his thoughts wandering and shook them off. He walked to his computer station with a sense of purpose. The crowd loved that. They wanted to see confidence He hit a couple of keys to activate the console, then reached for his Bose noise-canceling headphones. They were as expensive as Heaven’s pearly gates, but they worked. They used a technology called active noise control. A microphone embedded on the outside of the headphones detected incoming sound waves, then a tiny processor analyzed those sound waves within nanoseconds, instructing the speakers in the headphones to emit sound waves exactly opposite of the incoming soundwaves. The compression and rarefaction waves would strike each other, canceling each other out and thereby eliminating most or all of the unwanted sounds. They were one more slight advantage.Jett adjusted himself to the custom keyboard and mouse, both designed to increase his speed when selecting and ordering his forces. Starcraft was a real-time strategy game, requiring split-second decision making and uncanny timing. Tenths of seconds made a huge difference at this level, acting as the butterfly’s wing to affect a vicious storm on the opponent. A voice spoke in his headphones asking if he were ready. He lifted a thumb up and focused on controlling his breathing. He keyed in his gamer tag and ceased to be Jett.RaV0_zl stared at the countdown. He positioned his cursor exactly where his forces would appear, a location he had memorized through endless practice. Tenths of seconds. The countdown was the most stressful part of the whole thing. He had no control over it. The time inevitably shrunk smaller and smaller until it became zero.When it did, the briefing screen zoomed away and a rotund building, resembling a circular tank without a turret, appeared on a desert landscape with four small SCV’s. He immediately ordered the small robotic units to gather resources that would build his military and fuel his conquest.The goal of Starcraft was simple: destroy the opponent. The execution was substantially more complicated. It required building a military force strong enough to overpower the enemy’s entrenched defenses, or a force quick and sly enough to undercut the enemy’s economy, forcing a surrender. Jett had risen to the top of the Starcraft universe by being the first American to win a South Korean pro tournament. His unpredictable strategies left opponents unsure of how to prepare defenses, and hesitant to commit themselves to attacks, desperately aware that Jett had made himself famous by destroying opponents with ruthless counter-attacks. He was the Sun-Tzu of Starcraft, crushing his opponents psychologically then decimating their actual forces.Jett wasted no time. He moved one of his SCV’s to scout the landscape. An advantage in time or forces meant nothing if you did not know where the enemy’s base sat or where additional resources could be found. The small, motorized unit raced across the map and quickly found the opponent’s base. Jett used the SCV to harass XBanditX’s workers, drawing his attention away from building an army. A successful harassment would buy Jett valuable seconds.Jett quickly grew his base, adding a barracks to the south to train marines and constructing a factory slightly to the west where siege tanks would be assembled and used for defense. Jett had no way of knowing that a woman named Hillary Shreaver was sitting alone in a small, highly secure office in Virginia watching his game unfold, analyzing his strategy, and scribbling notes on a legal pad. He had no idea that she knew Doctor Steven P. Rosen, and no way of knowing that she would be the woman who would kill him.---------------------------------------3.0The first two minutes passed calmly for most players, but Jett wasn’t most players. He sent one of his SCV units into the enemy base and used its weak attack to harrass and distract XbanditX. He had to while both sides built bases and trained units. Jett distracted XbanditX withThe first two minutes of the match were the calm before the storm while both sides built bases and trained units that would later be deployed against the enemy. During those two minutes, there was no way Jett could have known he was being analyzed in a small room in Virginia by the person who would kill him.his was game four of a best of five, and RaV0_zl held a 2-1 lead over XbanditX. The audience held a sort of energy that propelled RaV0_zl to perform his best. With four consecutive championship titles, his tournament record was the highest in the world. He glanced through the windows within his sound proof compartment. The audience filled the auditorium, a few dozen were standing in the back because there were no more chairs. RaV0_zl thought of what his parents were thinking. More than likely they didn’t care, actually. Dad was so busy at his law firm he never rarely came home. Mom knew her husband had long ago fallen for someone at the law firm, but she couldn’t play sunday school teacher. She had her share of extra-curricular activities. As long as she got a share of the cash, she didn’t need to put a leash on him. She just loved to travel. She’d never made time for one of these starcraft competitions. Never bothered to call and wish him good luck. Online, RaV0_zl was the equivalent of Odysseus. He had a fan club. Hell, people paid him just to watch him play. Replays of his games were the most downloaded of any professional Starcraft player in the world.He never thought he’d be on TV playing Starcraft, but Koreans adopted Starcraft as their national game like Brazilians play soccer. Their public schools even had classes in Starcraft. He’d met a girl before and asked her if she’d played starcraft before. She answered, “I’m Korean aren’t I?” Nobody realizes it, but these people are crazy. They had the digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers, experienced gamers in their own right who called the action as it unfolded. One of their voices came into his BOSE sound-cancelling headsets which kept out any noise the sound-proof room didn’t. Even with a crowd shouting and cheering fifteen feet away, RaV0_zl could hear nothing but the sounds of the game himself. The voice asked him if he were ready. He raised his thumb, his eyes never leaving the screen. A five second countdown began.Through endless hours of practice, he had memorized where his first workers would appear on the screen and had already placed his cursor there. It saved him milliseconds. He sent his four workers to gather minerals. The first minute of the game was the calmest. By minute two, things were always unease. Every player had to prepare to rush or defend a rush. RaV0_zl had decided you always had to rush. His opponents knew that, so they built defenses that would shred any early attack by weak terran marines. And because his opponents always knew he rushed, in this last game RaV0_zl did not. He saved his resources and “tech’d,” meaning he left himself exposed for a pivotal two minutes. Any early strike and he’s caught with his pants down.XbanditX played the Protoss. They were a highly advanced alien civilization with strong warriors and high technology. They had an answer for every technology the humans ever used against them. Except the siege tank and the nuke.-----------In a UA science lab in Tuscon, Jeremy Landis hit redial.“What happened?” Calvin Peters asked him. Calvin stood against the brick wall wearing tight jeans and a University of Arizona tee-shirt with a sketched wildcat“He just hung up, I don’t know.”The redial didn’t connect, but after Landis set the phone down, it rang to life.“Sorry ‘bout that Landis. I think AT&T dropped my call.”“Oh no problem,” Landis replied. He covered the bottom of the phone and looked at the techie, “It’s Rosen. He says AT&T dropped his call.”“Ah,” the tech smiled. “He’s a liar but he’s good.”Landis grinned then pulled the receiver close to his ear, nodding and saying, “right” a lot. He finally hung up the phone and looked back at Calvin. ““That virus got them bad. If that thing ever strikes earth....Put him on speaker, the tech said.“What do you think of the footprint?”“What footprint?”“The one on the ground. I showed it to you.”“Oh, that shadow?”“You think that was a shadow?”“No doubt about it. Light and shadow play funny tricks on us in the video.”“What are you talking about Rosen? That’s high resolution imagery.”“I don’t care what the resolution is, it can’t be a footprint.”“Okay, whatever. What do you think happened here?”“Some kind of virus maybe?“You think a virus can leave bruise marks?”“Basically we have no idea.”he could sense that he was being lied to.“Okay, well good luck.” he hung up the phone and looked at the Tech. I don’t know what kind of virus leavesLook Jeremy,Starcraft is the most popular real-time strategy game in the world. Set in the far future, the game allows players to select one of three races: Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. RaV0_zl always chose the Terrans. They were the game’s only human race. They had the weakest soldiers but the best machines. Machines. He chose the Terrans because he hated it when aliens, even these dinky computer game aliens, killed humans. He’d rather clear the mother f-ers out himself.RaV0_zlRaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. He cloaked them and sent them northeast near the Protoss base.Seven hundred miles northwest of Phoenix, RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. The crowd wasHe cloaked them and sent them north around the Protoss base. He made sure to fly them within range of at least one of the photon canons the other player had deployed to the middle of the map as a way to watch RaV0_zl’s troop movements. It worked. XbanditX saw the force headed for his exposed northeast base. XbanditX owned the northwest natural expansion slot, too, and hoped to spread to a third resource center. But first he’d have to stop the incoming wraiths. They were invisible except when within range of photon cannons which could detect any cloaked unit.The problem for XbanditX was that he had no cannons on the northeast corner of his main base. The fact that he’d spotted the wraiths as they passed the middle of the map gave him some lead time. He swung up the map to his main base and frantically selected a worker probe to warp in cannons. It would take 34 seconds to fully warp in. By then the wraiths would be there, so he started three even though it cost his full load of minerals. Wraiths have poor air to ground attacks, so he knew that even though they could stop one cannon from warping in, they couldn’t stop three, and once one was up the wraiths would have to retreat. The wraiths would be there in just a few seconds more. XbanditX jumped the map to his expansion and ordered the probes to warp in a cannon for defense and a couple gateways where attack units could be summoned.The wraiths arrived before any of the three cannons had finished warping. The six wraiths fired their lasers at the first cannon. XbanditX had already brought anti-air units to the scene but until the cannons were fully constructed the units were blind to the cloaked wraiths. You’re base is under attack, the computerized voice warned. The red lasers from the wraiths ended the first cannon as it hit 98% complete. No big loss, XbanditX knew that would happen. Moments later, the other two cannons finalized and started firing fiery white orbs at the attacking aircraft. The Dragoons fired their orbs, too, forcing the wraiths away. Your forces are under attack, the voice repeated.But the wraiths didn’t retreat. This was XbanditX’s first feeling that something was wrong. The wraiths kept firing though they were clearly outgunned now. Two exploded at the same time and a third fell seconds later. The other three were quickly taking serious damage. Your forces are under attack, the voice warned. And they were.blah blah, some real life starcraft game i’ve changed...he wins brilliantly.“gg.”“gg.”The applause shook the room like he’d won a basketball game at the buzzer. It took some getting used to. He’d seen this coming, but most people hadn’t. The day when video game competitions would draw crowds that watched on giant screens and cheered their favorite players, mesmerized by the speed and tactical genius. The digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers called the action. Viewers tuned in on their TV’s and literally thousands watched via the internet. It was a subculture forsure, not basketball or soccer by any exagerration, but it was a subculture millions strong across the world. A subculture of tech-savvy youth who wanted to prove they had the genius, the reflexes, and the instinct to win.RaV0_zl, like all the top players, practiced nearly eight hours a day. Professional Gaming is just like any other profession. It’s full time.He had gained a popularity on the web. They joked he was “Iceman” because he didn’t make mistakes. He waited for his opponent to misstep, and then he snapped in like a serpent and ripped the digital life out of his opponents...They joked he was the “psychologist” because he played mind games. The saying went that to beat RaV0_zl you had to beat him on the game and beat him mentally. No one ever beat him mentally though. He had losses on his record. Inevitable when you play hundreds of matches a year. But he was perfect in every title game he’d been in. When the stress nearly cracked opponents, RaV0_zl slammed the hammer to make sure they cracked.sThey said him was like playing the devil. When you think he’ll poke you in the eye with his horns, he kicks you in the balls with his hooves.ForwardAll historical information in this novel is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge. Much of the information cited has been heatedly debated. This may well be because it is false. But it may be because we refuse to believe stories that makes us feel insecure. What a close evaluation of history teaches us is not, as the old saw goes, that history repeats itself. Instead, it is this: history will always surprise us.Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.Deuteronomy 9:140.1 In 1961, a group of scientists led by Dr. Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory developed an equation to predict the number of intelligent civilizations existing in our galaxy. Dubbed the Drake Equation, it accounted for seven variables. The first two variables are the least interesting: average star formation rate, about one per year, and the fraction of stars with planets, now believed to be one over one. The third variable in the equation is the first one that scientists seriously debate: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life. In our solar system, that number is no lower than 1/8. For other star systems, we can only guess. The Hubble Telescope employs a primary lens 94.5 inches wide and regularly takes exposures over twelve hours in duration, yet the sheer vastness of space prevents even the Hubble from visually identifying even planets larger than Jupiter. While the Hubble and other observatory instruments are not yet sensitive enough to detect exoplanets directly, they are sensitive enough to detect tiny wobbles in the orbits of distant stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets orbiting a given star. Still, the planets themselves remain essentially invisible and scientists are left to guess at how many may be capable of supporting life. A conservative estimate is one percent. However, much of what we once assumed about life is now hopelessly false. Scientists once believed that life could thrive only within delicate parameters of temperature, water, and radiation exposure. Discoveries since the 1990s have revealed that life on earth manages to thrive even in extreme environments, including perpetually frozen areas of Antarctica and alkaline lakes in California so caustic they can dissolve human skin. Some life forms have been found surviving near deep ocean vents where water temperatures never rest below boiling. Other life forms have been discovered living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Clearly life is more ubiquitous and stubborn than we tend to believe. Which leads to the four variable: the fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life. All of them. While this surprises the average reader, scientists overwhelmingly agree on this point. They even have a name for this principle: biological determinism. Where life can exist, it will exist. Some scientists today even argue that no clear demarcation exists between chemistry and biology, that biology is simply an extension of chemistry. Accordingly, life will always arise whenever environmental conditions allow, just as fire will always burn when the environment contains the requisite amount of heat, oxygen, and fuel. The fifth variable recognizes the sharp distinction between life and intelligent, communicating life. Dr. Drake himself originally estimated that only one percent of life-supporting planets would produce intelligent life. Scientists today are strongly polarized, many arguing that earth is the only planet that will ever attain intelligent life while others assert that all planets that support life will eventually develop intelligent life, a sort of bio-intellectual determinism. This is not so far-fetched. The only planet we know of that can support life, developed intelligent life. As far as we know, the universe is one for one. The sixth variable is the fraction of intelligent life forms that will develop means of communication via technological means. In other words, detectable signals. Dr. Drake conservatively estimated that only one percent of intelligent civilizations would develop such technology. Using his estimates, Dr. Drake calculated the expected number of intelligent, active communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. His result: 1,000 to 100,000 in our galaxy alone. 10 Trillion in the universe. In other words, the galaxy should be teaming with intelligent life. Our predicament is that we still have not yet found any intelligent life in our galaxy. This situation is a severe problem for reasons that initially are difficult to recognize but which will rapidly become apparent.1.0 The last of the horizon disappeared as night slid across the sky. Doctor Rosen rubbed his temples and took long, collected breaths. The scattered town lights below in the desert appeared identical to the stars above, making it difficult to sense whether the plane was right-side up or upside down. Rosen felt dizzy. The KC-135 he was flying in had been designed as an aerial refueler for military jets, not as a commercial airliner. As the plane passed through more rough air, Dr. Rosen’s stomach lurched, then collected itself. When the air settled again, he closed his eyes and lowered his head nearly to his knees. His breaths became long and deliberate. “We’ll be there shortly, Doctor.” The co-pilot said. “We are in Arizona airspace now. We’ll begin our descent in about fifteen minutes.” “Thank you.” Rosen managed, slowly sitting up. “Any word from Tucson?” “No, Sir. They had some kind of bug in the probe communication software. They’re working on it, should be up soon.” Rosen nodded. He gave up rubbing his head, resigned to the chiseling headache in his frontal lobe. He reached for his tablet computer and with a few gestures pulled up a map. A blue circle representing the aircraft strobed dimly on the hybrid image, about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Phoenix. He stared at the glowing and dimming circle, remembering the pulsing blue chests of the victims. “What?” Rosen responded. He noticed the cockpit, hundreds of dials and switches dimly glowing and rotating, and remembered where he was. “What?” the co-pilot said. “I thought you said something?” “No,” he paused. “Are you okay? I heard you breathing a bit heavy.” “Really? Nah, I’m fine, just haven’t slept for a while. Not a big fan of flying.” The co-pilot nodded while Rosen focused again on the tablet, touching the screen to awaken it. With three fingers on the glass display, he slid another window open that revealed a mathematical application. Seven letters confronted Rosen on the screen: R, fp , ne , fl , fi , fc , l. He began to enter numbers next to each variable. “You trying to calculate your chances of surviving?” the co-pilot joked. Rosen’s eyebrows crunched together momentarily, confused. “Oh, right,” he said, realizing the question was just coincidence. He let out an awkward laugh. “I get nervous flying, what can I say. Doesn’t help that we’re sitting on 180,000 pounds of jet fuel.” “Well trust me, these birds are safe. You’re more likely to win the lottery than see one of these crash.” Rosen looked back down at the tablet and touched the graph button with his right index finger. The screen morphed into a Cartesian coordinate system with dim grey vertical and horizontal bars running across and up and down the display. A sharp red line curved a path downward from left to right, steeply at first then inflecting to an increasingly shallow descent until it met the edge of the screen. Rosen placed his five fingers on the display and drew them together. As his fingers moved, the screen zoomed out to show more of the graph. Rosen scanned the diving line, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Not good.The plane touched down at Phoenix Sky Harbor ahead of schedule. Relief spread across his face when he walked off the plane onto the tarmac. He was glad to stand on a surface that did not move simultaneously along three axes. Most of the day’s flights had already landed, so the tarmac sat relatively quiet. He felt it odd to stand on reinforced cement instead of walk through a corridor to the main terminal, but the Air Force did not do commercial. Rosen aimed his face skyward through the orange blanket of lighting that covered Sky Harbor. He quickly found Venus and then Jupiter despite the light pollution. With his eyes he drew an arching line between the two planets, the ecliptic. The line guided him until he found Saturn. Rosen appreciated the Arizonan sky. Most people knew that Phoenix could go months without rain, but few outsiders realized that the city could go months without even a cloud. An astronomer’s dream. Rosen glanced at his phone to check the time. His smile faded and his foot tapped the ground over and over while the salty chemical stink from the petroleum storage slipped up his nose. The data from Pioneer XIII would start flowing as soon as Tucson got their technical bug figured out. Rosen had missed the Pioneer XII data feed before contact was lost, so he sure as Polaris would not miss Pioneer XIII when it touched down on the next exoplanet. He scrolled his phone’s directory, looking for the escort’s number. The intense stress he’d been feeling since the meeting at Langley tightened its grip on his neck and shoulder traps. Just as he tapped the button to call his escort, the black Ford Mustang pulled up, its sharp silver rims flexing in the airport light. Rosen opened the passenger door and threw himself into the seat. “About time,” Rosen said. “Easy Doc, I’m on time. Your plane arrived ahead of schedule.” “Just get me to my office.” Ten minutes later Rosen could see Sun Devil stadium growing as they neared the university. The football stadium sat wedged between the two peaks of “A Mountain.” In front of the stadium, Tempe Town Lake strolled in lazy blackness. Rosen remembered his surprise at seeing the small lake in the middle of the desert when he first arrived at Arizona State a decade ago to take a professorship. Only in the desert to people build lakes. “What’s the rush tonight?” the driver asked. “They don’t tell you?” “Nah, they just give us assignments and we do ‘em.” “Then I probably shouldn’t tell you either.” The driver rolled his eyes. He had grown accustomed to all the secrecy, but did they have to be so French about it? He turned right on University Avenue and guided the Mustang to the curb in front of the Palo Verde dorms. Rosen pushed the door out and hurriedly swung his bag around his shoulder and quickly walked off. The glass doors were still unlocked. Rosen walked into the lobby and pressed the down button by the elevators to his left. A few students walked past and exited the building. One of the astronomy labs must have just ended, Rosen thought. At least they have no idea. The elevator binged. Soon he was to his office door where he punched in his door code and scanned his badge. The thick door clunked as the heavy latch retracted. He sat down and logged into his terminal. The large LCD screen at his desk awakened. Rosen pressed a combination of keys and the backdrop image of Eugene Cernan planting the last American flag on the moon faded into a monotonous gray smear. The secure-data-link software loaded. Rosen unconsciously tapped his index finger against the desk, his eyes locked on the blue progress bar pushing its way from left to right across the screen. His phone beeped. A text message. Raw Data DL’d, Must see ASAP. Can you believe all this?? -Tuscon Rosen focused back on the terminal screen. The progress bar was no longer moving. He hit the retry button. No response. He pounded the mouse. Still nothing. He heard the whining of his computer’s processors working, picking up desperate speed. Then they stopped, too. A message box popped up: Fatal Error. Please Restart System. Unsaved Data May Be Lost. Rosen kicked his chair, which slid a few yards across the room. He rebooted the terminal and stared at the screen as though he could intimidate it into working. He grabbed his phone and sent a message back to Tuscon, “damn tech problems.” Seconds later, his phone rang. “Hey Stephen, are you looking at this?” the voice sounded excited. Mostly. “Not yet, my junkard terminal is rebooting. I can’t believe this tonight. Hold on.” Rosen re-entered his password and re-initiated the secure-data-link. “Okay, well you won’t understand what I’m saying till you see it, but look at the body positions. They seem too... I don’t know, too similar.” “To IV?” “Just like IV. I don’t know if we can keep this one wrapped. Two in a row now.” “Wait, it’s working now.” The secure-data-link connected and the video feed from Pioneer XIII automatically opened and began playing on Rosen’s terminal. He centered his eyes on the screen. The camera panned right revealing a hazel, polluted sky. There were no clouds, just an uneasy haze. As the camera panned further, a red river became visible, slithering through the ruins. It moved quickly, probably thinner than water, Rosen thought. The carcasses looked fresh only because they weren’t carbon-based, Rosen knew this. At least they aren’t pulsing this time. No, these ones were long dead. “What do you think?” the voice on the phone asked. Rosen stared at the bleak image. “I guess we’re still alone.” The man on the phone remotely panned the camera further right and tilted it downward. “And what do you think of those?” Rosen immediately closed the call. He hit a combination of keys to save a still-frame from the data feed. What the hell was a human footprint doing there.2.0 The gamer known as RaV0_zl lowered his goggles and waited to hear his name over the loudspeaker. Back in southern California, he was known as Jett Bass, but in South Korea the gaming world knew him by his enigmatic Starcraft tag, which they pronounced “Rav-oh-Zel.” In the hallway ramp that led to the tournament floor, Jett swung his arms side to side, like an American basketball player. Gaming is to Koreans what basketball is to Americans or soccer to Brazilians. Three television stations are dedicated to broadcasting gaming competitions in the only country on earth where the national sport is a computer game. In South Korea, professional Starcraft players like the legendary Lee Young-Ho and Jae-Dong are pop icons with literally millions of fans and paychecks that reach high into the six figures through prize money and sponsorships. Over one hundred and twenty thousand fans watched the 2005 SKY Pro-league championship, a Guinness world record for a pro gaming event. No where else in the world is gaming such a cultural phenomena. As gamers love to say, Korea got Seoul. Jett brought his palms together, fingers lined up, and pressed downward. He felt pressure leave his fingers as his joints popped loudly. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then lowered his goggles to his eyes. He looked over himself, dressed in a jumpsuit littered with corporate sponsors like Samsung and Ongamenet. What am I, a Nascar racer? he thought. But this was what pro gaming in South Korea had become: the digital offspring of Formula I Racing and WCW Wrestling. Boom. Fireworks launched on the other side of the entry gate and the crowd roared. Flashbulbs ignited. Jett loved this part, it made him feel like a god. The announcer shouted his name, pronouncing Bass like boss, but Jett was used to that by now. What mattered was his gamer tag. “Rav-oh-Zel” the announcer bellowed. Jett jogged out the gate, arms raised to the feverish crowd. He reached down and yanked off his goggles, then threw them into the stands where the fans erupted and dozens of hands thrusted after the goggles. If my parents had any idea. But they had none. Even while the crowd cheered, Jett felt his smile fade. They didn’t care. His dad worshipped money at the temple of Goldman Sachs. His mom knew her husband got his intimacy there, probably from the secretaries or analysts. Hell, even he knew that. But his mom was no saint herself. As long as money was deposited into her account every month, she was happy traveling the world alone and doing whatever romance-novel-addicted women do when they are single in foreign countries. Jett caught his thoughts wandering and shook them off. He walked to his computer station with a sense of purpose. The crowd loved that. They wanted to see confidence He hit a couple of keys to activate the console, then reached for his Bose noise-canceling headphones. They were as expensive as Heaven’s pearly gates, but they worked. They used a technology called active noise control. A microphone embedded on the outside of the headphones detected incoming sound waves, then a tiny processor analyzed those sound waves within nanoseconds, instructing the speakers in the headphones to emit sound waves exactly opposite of the incoming soundwaves. The compression and rarefaction waves would strike each other, canceling each other out and thereby eliminating most or all of the unwanted sounds. They were one more slight advantage. Jett adjusted himself to the custom keyboard and mouse, both designed to increase his speed when selecting and ordering his forces. Starcraft was a real-time strategy game, requiring split-second decision making and uncanny timing. Tenths of seconds made a huge difference at this level, acting as the butterfly’s wing to affect a vicious storm on the opponent. A voice spoke in his headphones asking if he were ready. He lifted a thumb up and focused on controlling his breathing. He keyed in his gamer tag and ceased to be Jett. RaV0_zl stared at the countdown. He positioned his cursor exactly where his forces would appear, a location he had memorized through endless practice. Tenths of seconds. The countdown was the most stressful part of the whole thing. He had no control over it. The time inevitably shrunk smaller and smaller until it became zero. When it did, the briefing screen zoomed away and a rotund building, resembling a circular tank without a turret, appeared on a desert landscape with four small SCV’s. He immediately ordered the small robotic units to gather resources that would build his military and fuel his conquest. The goal of Starcraft was simple: destroy the opponent. The execution was substantially more complicated. It required building a military force strong enough to overpower the enemy’s entrenched defenses, or a force quick and sly enough to undercut the enemy’s economy, forcing a surrender. Jett had risen to the top of the Starcraft universe by being the first American to win a South Korean pro tournament. His unpredictable strategies left opponents unsure of how to prepare defenses, and hesitant to commit themselves to attacks, desperately aware that Jett had made himself famous by destroying opponents with ruthless counter-attacks. He was the Sun-Tzu of Starcraft, crushing his opponents psychologically then decimating their actual forces. Jett wasted no time. He moved one of his SCV’s to scout the landscape. An advantage in time or forces meant nothing if you did not know where the enemy’s base sat or where additional resources could be found. The small, motorized unit raced across the map and quickly found the opponent’s base. Jett used the SCV to harass XBanditX’s workers, drawing his attention away from building an army. A successful harassment would buy Jett valuable seconds. Jett quickly grew his base, adding a barracks to the south to train marines and constructing a factory slightly to the west where siege tanks would be assembled and used for defense. Jett had no way of knowing that a woman named Hillary Shreaver was sitting alone in a small, highly secure office in Virginia watching his game unfold, analyzing his strategy, and scribbling notes on a legal pad. He had no idea that she knew Doctor Steven P. Rosen, and no way of knowing that she would be the woman who would kill him.---------------------------------------3.0The first two minutes passed calmly for most players, but Jett wasn’t most players. He sent one of his SCV units into the enemy base and used its weak attack to harrass and distract XbanditX. He had to while both sides built bases and trained units. Jett distracted XbanditX with The first two minutes of the match were the calm before the storm while both sides built bases and trained units that would later be deployed against the enemy. During those two minutes, there was no way Jett could have known he was being analyzed in a small room in Virginia by the person who would kill him.his was game four of a best of five, and RaV0_zl held a 2-1 lead over XbanditX. The audience held a sort of energy that propelled RaV0_zl to perform his best. With four consecutive championship titles, his tournament record was the highest in the world. He glanced through the windows within his sound proof compartment. The audience filled the auditorium, a few dozen were standing in the back because there were no more chairs. RaV0_zl thought of what his parents were thinking. More than likely they didn’t care, actually. Dad was so busy at his law firm he never rarely came home. Mom knew her husband had long ago fallen for someone at the law firm, but she couldn’t play sunday school teacher. She had her share of extra-curricular activities. As long as she got a share of the cash, she didn’t need to put a leash on him. She just loved to travel. She’d never made time for one of these starcraft competitions. Never bothered to call and wish him good luck. Online, RaV0_zl was the equivalent of Odysseus. He had a fan club. Hell, people paid him just to watch him play. Replays of his games were the most downloaded of any professional Starcraft player in the world. He never thought he’d be on TV playing Starcraft, but Koreans adopted Starcraft as their national game like Brazilians play soccer. Their public schools even had classes in Starcraft. He’d met a girl before and asked her if she’d played starcraft before. She answered, “I’m Korean aren’t I?” Nobody realizes it, but these people are crazy. They had the digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers, experienced gamers in their own right who called the action as it unfolded. One of their voices came into his BOSE sound-cancelling headsets which kept out any noise the sound-proof room didn’t. Even with a crowd shouting and cheering fifteen feet away, RaV0_zl could hear nothing but the sounds of the game himself. The voice asked him if he were ready. He raised his thumb, his eyes never leaving the screen. A five second countdown began. Through endless hours of practice, he had memorized where his first workers would appear on the screen and had already placed his cursor there. It saved him milliseconds. He sent his four workers to gather minerals. The first minute of the game was the calmest. By minute two, things were always unease. Every player had to prepare to rush or defend a rush. RaV0_zl had decided you always had to rush. His opponents knew that, so they built defenses that would shred any early attack by weak terran marines. And because his opponents always knew he rushed, in this last game RaV0_zl did not. He saved his resources and “tech’d,” meaning he left himself exposed for a pivotal two minutes. Any early strike and he’s caught with his pants down. XbanditX played the Protoss. They were a highly advanced alien civilization with strong warriors and high technology. They had an answer for every technology the humans ever used against them. Except the siege tank and the nuke. ----------- In a UA science lab in Tuscon, Jeremy Landis hit redial. “What happened?” Calvin Peters asked him. Calvin stood against the brick wall wearing tight jeans and a University of Arizona tee-shirt with a sketched wildcat “He just hung up, I don’t know.” The redial didn’t connect, but after Landis set the phone down, it rang to life.“Sorry ‘bout that Landis. I think AT&T dropped my call.” “Oh no problem,” Landis replied. He covered the bottom of the phone and looked at the techie, “It’s Rosen. He says AT&T dropped his call.” “Ah,” the tech smiled. “He’s a liar but he’s good.” Landis grinned then pulled the receiver close to his ear, nodding and saying, “right” a lot. He finally hung up the phone and looked back at Calvin. ““That virus got them bad. If that thing ever strikes earth.... Put him on speaker, the tech said. “What do you think of the footprint?” “What footprint?” “The one on the ground. I showed it to you.” “Oh, that shadow?” “You think that was a shadow?” “No doubt about it. Light and shadow play funny tricks on us in the video.” “What are you talking about Rosen? That’s high resolution imagery.” “I don’t care what the resolution is, it can’t be a footprint.” “Okay, whatever. What do you think happened here?” “Some kind of virus maybe? “You think a virus can leave bruise marks?” “Basically we have no idea.” he could sense that he was being lied to. “Okay, well good luck.” he hung up the phone and looked at the Tech. I don’t know what kind of virus leavesLook Jeremy,Starcraft is the most popular real-time strategy game in the world. Set in the far future, the game allows players to select one of three races: Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. RaV0_zl always chose the Terrans. They were the game’s only human race. They had the weakest soldiers but the best machines. Machines. He chose the Terrans because he hated it when aliens, even these dinky computer game aliens, killed humans. He’d rather clear the mother f-ers out himself. RaV0_zl RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. He cloaked them and sent them northeast near the Protoss base.Seven hundred miles northwest of Phoenix, RaV0_zl selected a half dozen wraiths. The crowd wasHe cloaked them and sent them north around the Protoss base. He made sure to fly them within range of at least one of the photon canons the other player had deployed to the middle of the map as a way to watch RaV0_zl’s troop movements. It worked. XbanditX saw the force headed for his exposed northeast base. XbanditX owned the northwest natural expansion slot, too, and hoped to spread to a third resource center. But first he’d have to stop the incoming wraiths. They were invisible except when within range of photon cannons which could detect any cloaked unit. The problem for XbanditX was that he had no cannons on the northeast corner of his main base. The fact that he’d spotted the wraiths as they passed the middle of the map gave him some lead time. He swung up the map to his main base and frantically selected a worker probe to warp in cannons. It would take 34 seconds to fully warp in. By then the wraiths would be there, so he started three even though it cost his full load of minerals. Wraiths have poor air to ground attacks, so he knew that even though they could stop one cannon from warping in, they couldn’t stop three, and once one was up the wraiths would have to retreat. The wraiths would be there in just a few seconds more. XbanditX jumped the map to his expansion and ordered the probes to warp in a cannon for defense and a couple gateways where attack units could be summoned. The wraiths arrived before any of the three cannons had finished warping. The six wraiths fired their lasers at the first cannon. XbanditX had already brought anti-air units to the scene but until the cannons were fully constructed the units were blind to the cloaked wraiths. You’re base is under attack, the computerized voice warned. The red lasers from the wraiths ended the first cannon as it hit 98% complete. No big loss, XbanditX knew that would happen. Moments later, the other two cannons finalized and started firing fiery white orbs at the attacking aircraft. The Dragoons fired their orbs, too, forcing the wraiths away. Your forces are under attack, the voice repeated. But the wraiths didn’t retreat. This was XbanditX’s first feeling that something was wrong. The wraiths kept firing though they were clearly outgunned now. Two exploded at the same time and a third fell seconds later. The other three were quickly taking serious damage. Your forces are under attack, the voice warned. And they were.blah blah, some real life starcraft game i’ve changed... he wins brilliantly. “gg.” “gg.” The applause shook the room like he’d won a basketball game at the buzzer. It took some getting used to. He’d seen this coming, but most people hadn’t. The day when video game competitions would draw crowds that watched on giant screens and cheered their favorite players, mesmerized by the speed and tactical genius. The digital gaming equivalent of play-by-play announcers called the action. Viewers tuned in on their TV’s and literally thousands watched via the internet. It was a subculture forsure, not basketball or soccer by any exagerration, but it was a subculture millions strong across the world. A subculture of tech-savvy youth who wanted to prove they had the genius, the reflexes, and the instinct to win. RaV0_zl, like all the top players, practiced nearly eight hours a day. Professional Gaming is just like any other profession. It’s full time. He had gained a popularity on the web. They joked he was “Iceman” because he didn’t make mistakes. He waited for his opponent to misstep, and then he snapped in like a serpent and ripped the digital life out of his opponents. ..They joked he was the “psychologist” because he played mind games. The saying went that to beat RaV0_zl you had to beat him on the game and beat him mentally. No one ever beat him mentally though. He had losses on his record. Inevitable when you play hundreds of matches a year. But he was perfect in every title game he’d been in. When the stress nearly cracked opponents, RaV0_zl slammed the hammer to make sure they cracked.s They said him was like playing the devil. When you think he’ll poke you in the eye with his horns, he kicks you in the balls with his hooves.

Mormon Zen

Abraham Lincoln

Alone

Mission Farewell

Book iii

Forgiving God.

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