Last week,  the bishop asked me to speak today.  Then he told me:  'Count your blessings."I'm pretty sure that was the topic, but it might have been advice for how to deal with the assignment...
I think we all love listening to children pray.  They really count their blessings.  "I'm thankful for mommy and daddy, and my brother and my sister, and water, and apples, and legos, and the Wii, and candy, and Halloween, and Christmas, and my birthday, etc etc
Once we get older, we stop being so open about what we're thankful for.  If we were all a little more honest we'd be counting our blessings like:  I thank thee for wikipedia, kiwis, that DDR is out of style.
Well we're in the month of November which means elections and Thanksgiving.

Alright, let's go to 1860.  This is before color was invented.  And we're in Auburn, New York, at the country mansion of William Seward, senator of New York and its former governor.  Let me tell you about Seward.  Fourteen years earlier, the same year that Joseph Smith was killed, there was a black man named William Freeman.
William Freeman was released from prison.  He had served 5 years for a crime he had not committed.  Upon release, he entered the home of a wealthy white farmer and killed his family without remorse.  The citizens of Auburn were up in arms, as could be expected.  But investigations revealed that Freeman's family had a history of insanity and that while in jail for a crime he did not commit, he was flogged so severly that he was left deaf and deranged.
At his trial, the court asked, "Will anyone defend this man?"  There was silence in court.
Seward, risking his reputation, arose and said, "may it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner."  Only his wife supported him in his decision.
William Seward was heavily favored to win the Republican Nomination in 1860.  In his hometown of Auburn where he waited for the results, cannons were brought in ready to fire when his victory was announced.  Excited crowds gathered by his beautiful mansion whose grand fireplace had been crafted by a young carpenter named Brigham Young.
Seward was considered the leader of the anti-slavery movement.  Every Northern newspaper suppported him and picked him to win the Republican nomination.  He was so highly regarded that even some opposition newspapers supported him.
(I have a cheat sheet)
So in 1860, at the Republican convention these were the four candidates in order of likihood to secure the nomination:  William Seward, Edward Bates, Salmon Chase, and one Abraham Lincoln.  Seward had so much support that a motion was made to vote a day early.  The secretary of the convention reported that the papers were not ready, so the voting would take place the next day.  That night, Horace Greeley, an old friend of Seward who had felt ignored by Seward when he became successful, got up and spoke to the delegations that night, and essentially betrayed Seward.  His angry speech single-handedly turned the election.  Lincoln had known he had no outright chance at the nomination.  Instead, he positioned himself to be each delegation's second choice.  He won the nomination.  Seward was heart-broken.
When Abraham was elected, he offered the post of Secretary of State to Seward.  Seward accepted, but still felt cheated out the election.
Soon after, a congressman came to Seward's office trying to get a certain politican an appointment in the new government.  The congressman said that the politician would be 'disappointed' if he didn't get the appointment.Seward replied: "Disappointment!  You speak to me of disappointment?  To me, who was justly entitled to the Repubican nomination for the presidency and who had to stand aside and see it given to a little Illinois lawyer!"
3 months later, Seward said of Abraham:  "His magnanimity is almost superhuman."  A few years later, he would say, in plain humlity, that Abraham was: "The best and wisest man he had ever known."
But at his deathbed, Seward said:

William Worsworth said 'the best portion of a good man's life: His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.'

If I could imagine Hell, it would be a perfect remembrance of all my sins, replayed over and over again in front of me.  But I wouldn't be so worried about where I was as what I'd turned down.

The Civil War took a huge toll on Abraham.  I cannot imagine overseeing a war that cost more American lives than every single other war America has ever fought, including the Revolutionary, first and second World Wars, Vietnam, and Iraq.  One of the few things during those cold years that Abraham enjoyed was going over all the court-martials for soldiers who had, under the fear of battle, deserted the army and were punishable by death.  Abraham would search each court-martial meticulously to find any reason to pardon a soldier.  His generals argued against him that he used the power of the pardon too liberally, that he would damage the morale of the troops.  But Abraham privately worried that he exercised it too little.
My last remarks:all I could bring myself to say in my prayers was, "Where is thy mercy!?"  I don't think I'm alone.  Perhaps for some of you, hard times have dIn one of the Greek tragedies, Agamemnon says, 'Wisdom comes through suffering.  Pain that cannot forget, even in our sleep, falls drop by drop upon the heart, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."And I realized in pain that night a lesson in some small degree that was learned by a 33-year-old shivering in a cell in, of all names, Liberty's Jail, that Mercy cannot be demanded.  It can only be given, and to efficacious, it must be accepted.
And therein dwells the Atonement.  While the misguided churches of history have built enormous cathedrals and chapels designed to impress upon man his littleness next to God, it is only the restored gospel that shuns distance and embraces closeness, for Atonement means to be At-One, to be together, to have received Mercy.
We all have to learn the lesson that Eve and her husband Adam learned after finding themselves in the dreary wilderness.  We must learn the lesson that even a man who parted a sea had to learn, a lesson that was taught by the adopted son of a Jewish carpenter in a garden while his best friends slept.
So when we count our many blessings, perhaps we never really need to count more than one.In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Last week,  the bishop asked me to speak today.  Then he told me:  'Count your blessings."I'm pretty sure that was the topic, but it might have been advice for how to deal with the assignment...I think we all love listening to children pray.  They really count their blessings.  "I'm thankful for mommy and daddy, and my brother and my sister, and water, and apples, and legos, and the Wii, and candy, and Halloween, and Christmas, and my birthday, etc etcOnce we get older, we stop being so open about what we're thankful for.  If we were all a little more honest we'd be counting our blessings like:  I thank thee for wikipedia, kiwis, that DDR is out of style.Well we're in the month of November which means elections and Thanksgiving.Alright, let's go to 1860.  This is before color was invented.  And we're in Auburn, New York, at the country mansion of William Seward, senator of New York and its former governor.  Let me tell you about Seward.  Fourteen years earlier, the same year that Joseph Smith was killed, there was a black man named William Freeman.William Freeman was released from prison.  He had served 5 years for a crime he had not committed.  Upon release, he entered the home of a wealthy white farmer and killed his family without remorse.  The citizens of Auburn were up in arms, as could be expected.  But investigations revealed that Freeman's family had a history of insanity and that while in jail for a crime he did not commit, he was flogged so severly that he was left deaf and deranged.At his trial, the court asked, "Will anyone defend this man?"  There was silence in court.Seward, risking his reputation, arose and said, "may it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner."  Only his wife supported him in his decision.William Seward was heavily favored to win the Republican Nomination in 1860.  In his hometown of Auburn where he waited for the results, cannons were brought in ready to fire when his victory was announced.  Excited crowds gathered by his beautiful mansion whose grand fireplace had been crafted by a young carpenter named Brigham Young.Seward was considered the leader of the anti-slavery movement.  Every Northern newspaper suppported him and picked him to win the Republican nomination.  He was so highly regarded that even some opposition newspapers supported him.(I have a cheat sheet)So in 1860, at the Republican convention these were the four candidates in order of likihood to secure the nomination:  William Seward, Edward Bates, Salmon Chase, and one Abraham Lincoln.  Seward had so much support that a motion was made to vote a day early.  The secretary of the convention reported that the papers were not ready, so the voting would take place the next day.  That night, Horace Greeley, an old friend of Seward who had felt ignored by Seward when he became successful, got up and spoke to the delegations that night, and essentially betrayed Seward.  His angry speech single-handedly turned the election.  Lincoln had known he had no outright chance at the nomination.  Instead, he positioned himself to be each delegation's second choice.  He won the nomination.  Seward was heart-broken.When Abraham was elected, he offered the post of Secretary of State to Seward.  Seward accepted, but still felt cheated out the election.Soon after, a congressman came to Seward's office trying to get a certain politican an appointment in the new government.  The congressman said that the politician would be 'disappointed' if he didn't get the appointment.Seward replied: "Disappointment!  You speak to me of disappointment?  To me, who was justly entitled to the Repubican nomination for the presidency and who had to stand aside and see it given to a little Illinois lawyer!"3 months later, Seward said of Abraham:  "His magnanimity is almost superhuman."  A few years later, he would say, in plain humlity, that Abraham was: "The best and wisest man he had ever known."But at his deathbed, Seward said:William Worsworth said 'the best portion of a good man's life: His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.'If I could imagine Hell, it would be a perfect remembrance of all my sins, replayed over and over again in front of me.  But I wouldn't be so worried about where I was as what I'd turned down.The Civil War took a huge toll on Abraham.  I cannot imagine overseeing a war that cost more American lives than every single other war America has ever fought, including the Revolutionary, first and second World Wars, Vietnam, and Iraq.  One of the few things during those cold years that Abraham enjoyed was going over all the court-martials for soldiers who had, under the fear of battle, deserted the army and were punishable by death.  Abraham would search each court-martial meticulously to find any reason to pardon a soldier.  His generals argued against him that he used the power of the pardon too liberally, that he would damage the morale of the troops.  But Abraham privately worried that he exercised it too little.My last remarks:all I could bring myself to say in my prayers was, "Where is thy mercy!?"  I don't think I'm alone.  Perhaps for some of you, hard times havedIn one of the Greek tragedies, Agamemnon says, 'Wisdom comes through suffering.  Pain that cannot forget, even in our sleep, falls drop by drop upon the heart, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."And I realized in pain that night a lesson in some small degree that was learned by a 33-year-old shivering in a cell in, of all names, Liberty's Jail, that Mercy cannot be demanded.  It can only be given, and to efficacious, it must be accepted.And therein dwells the Atonement.  While the misguided churches of history have built enormous cathedrals and chapels designed to impress upon man his littleness next to God, it is only the restored gospel that shuns distance and embraces closeness, for Atonement means to be At-One, to be together, to have received Mercy.We all have to learn the lesson that Eve and her husband Adam learned after finding themselves in the dreary wilderness.  We must learn the lesson that even a man who parted a sea had to learn, a lesson that was taught by the adopted son of a Jewish carpenter in a garden while his best friends slept.So when we count our many blessings, perhaps we never really need to count more than one.In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Last week,  the bishop asked me to speak today.  Then he told me:  'Count your blessings."I'm pretty sure that was the topic, but it might have been advice for how to deal with the assignment...I think we all love listening to children pray.  They really count their blessings.  "I'm thankful for mommy and daddy, and my brother and my sister, and water, and apples, and legos, and the Wii, and candy, and Halloween, and Christmas, and my birthday, etc etcOnce we get older, we stop being so open about what we're thankful for.  If we were all a little more honest we'd be counting our blessings like:  I thank thee for wikipedia, kiwis, that DDR is out of style.Well we're in the month of November which means elections and Thanksgiving.Alright, let's go to 1860.  This is before color was invented.  And we're in Auburn, New York, at the country mansion of William Seward, senator of New York and its former governor.  Let me tell you about Seward.  Fourteen years earlier, the same year that Joseph Smith was killed, there was a black man named William Freeman.William Freeman was released from prison.  He had served 5 years for a crime he had not committed.  Upon release, he entered the home of a wealthy white farmer and killed his family without remorse.  The citizens of Auburn were up in arms, as could be expected.  But investigations revealed that Freeman's family had a history of insanity and that while in jail for a crime he did not commit, he was flogged so severly that he was left deaf and deranged.At his trial, the court asked, "Will anyone defend this man?"  There was silence in court.Seward, risking his reputation, arose and said, "may it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner."  Only his wife supported him in his decision.William Seward was heavily favored to win the Republican Nomination in 1860.  In his hometown of Auburn where he waited for the results, cannons were brought in ready to fire when his victory was announced.  Excited crowds gathered by his beautiful mansion whose grand fireplace had been crafted by a young carpenter named Brigham Young.Seward was considered the leader of the anti-slavery movement.  Every Northern newspaper suppported him and picked him to win the Republican nomination.  He was so highly regarded that even some opposition newspapers supported him.(I have a cheat sheet)So in 1860, at the Republican convention these were the four candidates in order of likihood to secure the nomination:  William Seward, Edward Bates, Salmon Chase, and one Abraham Lincoln.  Seward had so much support that a motion was made to vote a day early.  The secretary of the convention reported that the papers were not ready, so the voting would take place the next day.  That night, Horace Greeley, an old friend of Seward who had felt ignored by Seward when he became successful, got up and spoke to the delegations that night, and essentially betrayed Seward.  His angry speech single-handedly turned the election.  Lincoln had known he had no outright chance at the nomination.  Instead, he positioned himself to be each delegation's second choice.  He won the nomination.  Seward was heart-broken.When Abraham was elected, he offered the post of Secretary of State to Seward.  Seward accepted, but still felt cheated out the election.Soon after, a congressman came to Seward's office trying to get a certain politican an appointment in the new government.  The congressman said that the politician would be 'disappointed' if he didn't get the appointment.Seward replied: "Disappointment!  You speak to me of disappointment?  To me, who was justly entitled to the Repubican nomination for the presidency and who had to stand aside and see it given to a little Illinois lawyer!"3 months later, Seward said of Abraham:  "His magnanimity is almost superhuman."  A few years later, he would say, in plain humlity, that Abraham was: "The best and wisest man he had ever known."But at his deathbed, Seward said:William Worsworth said 'the best portion of a good man's life: His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.'If I could imagine Hell, it would be a perfect remembrance of all my sins, replayed over and over again in front of me.  But I wouldn't be so worried about where I was as what I'd turned down.The Civil War took a huge toll on Abraham.  I cannot imagine overseeing a war that cost more American lives than every single other war America has ever fought, including the Revolutionary, first and second World Wars, Vietnam, and Iraq.  One of the few things during those cold years that Abraham enjoyed was going over all the court-martials for soldiers who had, under the fear of battle, deserted the army and were punishable by death.  Abraham would search each court-martial meticulously to find any reason to pardon a soldier.  His generals argued against him that he used the power of the pardon too liberally, that he would damage the morale of the troops.  But Abraham privately worried that he exercised it too little.My last remarks:all I could bring myself to say in my prayers was, "Where is thy mercy!?"  I don't think I'm alone.  Perhaps for some of you, hard times havedIn one of the Greek tragedies, Agamemnon says, 'Wisdom comes through suffering.  Pain that cannot forget, even in our sleep, falls drop by drop upon the heart, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."And I realized in pain that night a lesson in some small degree that was learned by a 33-year-old shivering in a cell in, of all names, Liberty's Jail, that Mercy cannot be demanded.  It can only be given, and to efficacious, it must be accepted.And therein dwells the Atonement.  While the misguided churches of history have built enormous cathedrals and chapels designed to impress upon man his littleness next to God, it is only the restored gospel that shuns distance and embraces closeness, for Atonement means to be At-One, to be together, to have received Mercy.We all have to learn the lesson that Eve and her husband Adam learned after finding themselves in the dreary wilderness.  We must learn the lesson that even a man who parted a sea had to learn, a lesson that was taught by the adopted son of a Jewish carpenter in a garden while his best friends slept.So when we count our many blessings, perhaps we never really need to count more than one.In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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.

Mission FarewellSunday smells different,when it’s your last.Your arm hair tingles like whenyou reach the rollercoaster’s release point.One slip could be it.Like you’re walking atight-rope of words andbalance by saying just the right ones.There are so many smiles herethat you’d surmise someonewas soon to be sweetly returnedinstead of deeply departed.Unless you look at your mother,sunken like a crater,whose smile quivers under the weightof tears heavy like titanium.Well look away then,Look at your notes!Look at the blue-bound bookthat surprise attacked you one night.You’re going to walk a lot of milesthrough the Zacapan Desert for that book,to give it away.All these books you give awayare like landmines,you never know when someonewill complete the circuit and light a fuse.An entire civilization subsidized the cost.It’s probably better that you can’t hear me,who knows if you’d still goafter I tell you how sadyou will become.How much walking in Sacatepequez,and standing and knocking,it will take to teach youhow far the sun’s marathon.You’ll feel he’s cheating in wintermonths when his day’s journeyis hours shorter than yours.Whatever animal is timechooses to chomp through the hymnsbut will chew slowly when it’s your turn.Those hymns are sung already,and the bread reaches you,though you have no idea howit literally reaches through the ether.Do you know how long your armhas to be to reach two thousand years?The bread and water,you take as if you understand.I can tell you now,Your naivety is endearing.You don’t know.But of course you don’t know.You don’t even know all of what you’re going to sayA two-year baptism,a life itself born in Baja Verapazand ending in tiny Estancia.Baptism with water and salt seeped through your pores.Baptism with fire like the one that destroyedYellowstone forest, the one that made it so beautiful today,Not that you often take the time tolook at it like a child.when the Bishop sits down.You don’t even know the ñ with a tilda.The bread and water, you takeas if you understood.But of this you know nothing,and Some pulsing poweris to your soul as your heart to your flesh.You will learn the length of a daywhen you walk and standin Sacatepequez and no one,not one, welcome you in.You will finally respect that daily marathonthe sun has to walk every day.You will know the poor in Cañadas whenyou feel poor and are a hundred timesthe richest.When your Christmas seems small in a boxtil Acajabon’s comes in an envelope.Think things are hard? Waittil you limp for the last two hundred days.You will value your dreams because they arethe only times you are alone.Except when after a hard day’s labor,you labot in your dreams, and thenwake to a day of labor.That odd quiet, that’s becauseyou will go months wihtout hearing a single jetoverhead.Do you believe it will take all two yearsto untangle the strings in your soul?And when you need the small things,you will, You will alwaysremember the lost, white castle.Do you know that the first time you hear a whisperyou won’t truly pray for a month you’ll be so scared.You always thought you knew,but when you really know it’s scary ,isn’t it?Who would have guessed thata place like Sanarate would bethe pivot of your life?In 84 weeks you will sit on a mattress and hearyour first real prayer.In 105 weeks you will see people cry,people you only shortly knew,tears of sorrow and tears of joy,verbatim from the Patriarch.Do you know to be filledyou must be emptied?And when you die,you will scream in your dreamsfor further life and beg mercyto never return to thatdeath we call normal life.Confuscious wondered if he were a manthat dreamed he was a butterfly ora butterly that dreamed he was a man.You will dream you are an Elderhaving to dream you’re a boy.It’s already your turn.“Good morning Brothers and Sisters.”It only cost a civilization.

Muse! Fly me to that most momentous mornWhen He who moves amidst the Seraphim1As mighty ruler, monarch lov’d, didst reachFrom his ethereal2 throne to warm embrace,With his first son, the lonesome mother earth;Reveal that pivot confluence3 of GodAnd man that sacred made a grove of treesAnd to all saints hence lives a pilgrim homeWherein the twin divine with light the earthDid kiss; wherein unbolted the last seal,Released anew those yearning astral springsTo spill on saints the myst’ries of the Heav’nsWhich once of ancient ages prophets madeAnd now restores the call of prophet, seer,And revelat’r to lead these latter days.May I through thee, Spirit, remind all realmsThat live beneath the roof of ancient starsFrom Eden’s east to Desolation’s cragsThat yet moves God’s unsleeping hand, steadfastThe waters of His wisdom to us stream,And one bright morning in a spring of lateDescended here to rouse our drifting4 race.The mountain on whose slanted dirt I stoodThe force of vision fast propell’d away;Enspher’d me with unceasing whiteA principality,5 one swift and trueOn some supreme command o'vr me she castThis boundless cloak by finer hands entwined,My feeble orbs of mortal mold to shieldAgainst the blazing shots of raging starsAnd guard my mind, still unprepared,From th'unencumbered depths of perfect spaceThrough which I timeless flew.No sooner had my pupils thinly changedTo bear the brightness of my sudden flightThen veil-like spread the fair celestial clothUncov’ring to my refinéd sightA forest spot sparse explored, a scoreAnd eighteen hundred circuits6 since our LordEmerged as man to subdue subduing sin,To free us all from shackles self-secured.Day breaks across the grass and maple trees,With velvet light as soft as mothers’ handsIt strokes the forest growth with waking tone7And lures the life therein to stretch and stir.Now to my side an angel silent mov’dLike warmth which easy slides through summer’s breeze.Unknown this soul, but yet familiar seems—His nose and chin like mine; by semblance suchI knew him kin; he must from branches olderTo me relate within the growing catchOf my lofty fam’ly tree. At his clear eyes,Which sent me love, I gazed with restrainéd awe;My guide inhaled the pure spring early air,For spirits breathe indeed like we, and turn’dTo me to speak these higher words:"Regard that florid Dawn now westward peelsFrom earth the drowsy sheet that births our dreams.Illustr’ous sister, Dawn, ‘tis her who clearsOur misty minds from deepest drifts and who,Without, we’d from illucid8 dreams n’vr awake,Disoriented captives to black night.But saving Dawn doth join disjointed thought;She godlike orders the rebel quintet9Of senses to cohere,10 thus she plays midwifeTo our pregnant minds.11Mark the life that first lights first arouse,How Dawn not only brings the earth her hues,but carries with her golden keys of deed.”I looked anew at this arriving lightThat vivid made the flowers’ red and gold,and hazel dyed the bark within this yard.Indeed the grove did move within herselfDawn’s warmth gently thawed the frozen life.Like men who joyous greet the warmth of Dawn,And stretch to full absorb her golden sparksAnd therein feed the bowels of bliss,So these stones, insects, and higher life awake,Another day’s measure gladly to meet.I gazed their home of uncut lumber wall’d,The swaying wings of vibrant birds as roof,For carpet naught but grass and restful dirt,Harmonious home in greenest season sits.Thou emerald term, verdant juncture,Oh Spring, thy cause is but an earthly tilt!12Perhaps they wait some contemplation pure,These rocks and leaves that beautify, awareMuch more than mortals might of them believe.What patient minds must therein full resideTo bide the centuries and yet find joyTo ev’r achieve their measure of creatión.For they by gods too were terrestrial placedAs children of the third primeval day.13The thoughts of these still stones and treesTo know! And did they know what light this way came?If they prescient knowledge owned, diThe patient lessons they could share,and most of all the coming lightWith hand outstretch’d, my guideIn rapt’rous voice to me he sang:  Behold,The spot selected to play stage to events,blah blah blah-- unfinished stuff for a few lines....A brilliant answer to the prayers of not onlyA farming boy, but all those of ages,Here will bloom amongst the buds the latestIssue of truth from beyond our common terrain,A new dispensation in latest days,Indeed the restorationThere! A great and noble youth of consequence!Observe his truthfutruthful path patPeripheral my vision entered the boySmile-spelled, doubt vacationary.Near the ax left from his prior day's laborKneels the boy by the humbled stump,--end of unfinished stuff, but this next stuff isn’t polishedyet either---“Now still, my brother. Here kneels our boyAt the holy pivot of full time."Knees planted in the earth, dear Joseph spoke:'O Father in Heaven, Hallowed Name,What beauty and solace here resideAs though t'were their cabin home.How resident dwells song and manifest love;I spy thy manifold creation and its peace.Organic order, over which the moonMajestically moves, thy authenticity affirms.14What evidence presents seasonal colors growthHow indisputable march light lights hereI kneel a link between the red earth and blue heightTo beg forgiveness of my sins,Oh! incontinent acts my soul divide.Hear my prayer, Father, I plead for pureHeart and clean hands and, lacking wisdom,I seek from thee thy compassionate compass,Thy invariable ray to trail in mortal path."---now to mostly polished stuff again---Oh the beauty of this wood and pleasant springIt seemed that Heav’n readied to annex this groveBut Lo, the winter Dark vengeful of all,And chiefly now this spring invasion,Downward! That Heaven-exiled! Old Scratch!Th’eldest of sin, Architect of Contention!His plan imperil'd he thus to swift motion flew:The wingéd sire serpent Eastward streak’dThen meteor-like drop't in our present grove;Like shadow, soundless, so he lands:The substance absent though visibly real.The upsetting of leaves unblown by windRuffled the boy, who spun to see what manBehind him strode.  Peace lost and luster paledBut no material soul therein strove.None earthly element could he there discern,But a detectable darkness inward crept.Uneased but unaware what slithered there,Joseph attemp't again to plead the GodOf fallen men and persevering love.Before his words could heavenward hie,The foreign sound drew close and dark and stale.Abruptly to his feet our boy of prayerBehooved to defend in the shading woodsNot from any imagined ruinful forceBut some unseen shade15 manifestly realIn the indelicate wind of the wood.All paths else him closed in midnight despair,Joseph's heart outward hammered in terrorWhen in the glare of appalling powerHe knelt in third and boldest attempt to pierceThe shaded air to reach for mighty God,When at the instant lunged a mighty fangAnd snagged the boy’s visage with poison fearAnd flung his frame to the dirty earth;Its sinful scales slithered against his skin,The slime of gloom moist wrapped around his soul.Now fully coiled the shadow inward squeezedAround the helpless child whose sin was prayer;Its forked tongue slipped deeply into his ears,Oh hellish hiss! Constricting doom!"Joseph!” spoke the vip’rous voice at last.Proud mortal doth thou seek disrupt the King?Kneeled youth of etiquette most arrogant,Untaught the infinite distance betwixtThe earth and Heav'n, th'untractable traverse.Unreachably distant sits thy Judge in CourtIn veil'd16 abode with His all-spying eyeEv'r piercing all, ev'n past infinity's rim,Its zeniths high and opponent nadirs.17Proud mortal Joe, doth thou propose disturbAlmighty God? Whose measure oceans heed,Whose whim18 th' unnumbered spheres19  inerrant observe,Whose Word delivered creation, yea, HeWho stretched the firmament from the deep?Who bound the pristine dark with godly light,Who bent the very beams that bear the sky!20From Him doth thou attention seek, proud man?He to whom angels sing, oblivious to end?Who recommendest thee, give account!In what devout spectrum resides thy glory?Tell what bespeaks thy dignity?  State now!More fit a fallen creature to grant leaveThan presence of Supernal Pow'r here demand.Resign thyself to gross obediénce:Devoid of question, brim'd of submissión.21Impious pester is thy begging prayer.I warn thee unworthy heir, cease thy plea.Full antonym of piety, vain ventúreDefine thy selfish, unwhole request.Why thee, puny fell animal?22 Answer!Thy innocence, what of?  Gone and Extinct;T'was irrevocably __ forfeitedBy first, then second, disobedience.23Ev'n Feigns have life immortal, but thine?Whence? Stripped by punishment divine,Holy indignation rebelliously earned,The consequence forewarn'd, counsel forgone.What God would answer such a mutinous race?How deceived your hope, How blind thou art!Tempóral matter thy twin eyes alonebehold, what myst’ries thou canst never knowthou time-bound, earth-bound, sin-bound breed!A stone thy bones may crush without a thoughtAnd particles smaller than sight discernsCast thee on thy bed.  ImmoderateHeat cooks thy flesh; the cold thou canst not bear.Contrast, instead, imperious boy with God.What type of pow'r can wield the North'rn chillAgainst Ethereal Presence, or relate to meWhat influence maintains the meridian24Heat counter unalloy'd Law, Word, and Truth?The fiery Sun with his ranged canon aim'd,Doth He strike fear into the Auth'r of light?The Himalaya hedge thy global path,Yet seek compare with real Supremity?This whole azure marble of earth is His,Though aggregate25 could not resolve impedeHer Primeval Foreman, Artist, and Breath.And how comparest thou to mighty Earth?Compute, then, the infinite ratio setOf thee to God, thou grain of sand!Hast thou forgot this truth: of dust thou art?Then ponder thy presumption!Goodness would hurl thy sin-stained form,For in such presence how coulds't thou withstand?For ev’n on earth thou art forever frail:How dependent on breath thy every act;Canst thou far walk without thy daily bread?Subject to thirst like vile swine and beasts;What strain of time canst thou escape from sleep?To thy lustful passions thou art a slave!If vacant roof or cloth, thou art exposed,Ill-formed to hold dominion of this world.The elements haste not combine to dictateThy end, suffice a single ball26 or less:A shallow fall may deliver thee death.27Seekest thou God, oh sinful man misled?Carnal rebel, denoted enemy,Pursuant to sin, virus of vice, supremeOnly in sensitivity to pain!Varied from animal only by this:Thy consummate misery and expert woe!Thy pleading fails and Doom upon thee stares!No words could move his crippled tongue,Destruction readied now his brazen swordHad not at this moment, oh great alarm,A dawn blaze broke the black, blah blah

When a depressed person begins feeling happy is the exact time that he is at highest risk of committing suicide.  It's as surprising as it is sad.  The reason is this:  the human psyche can endure incredible suffering.  It can persevere through years of being a prisoner of war, a kidnapped child, and, as is more likely, through financial straits and serious relationship difficulties.  The pain can be tremendous, but we can endure.  At least once.

The dangerous moment is after we have endured and our situation has improved.  The relief we feel is matched by the dread of having to endure that situation again.  When depressed people feel happier, they doubt they could ever survive the depths of depression again.  Thus the high risk of suicide.  When the person notices the signs that he is falling back into depression, that his fortunes have reversed on him again, then is the most futile moment sadly followed too often by the most futile ending.

With no disrespect to those who have lost a family member or friend to suicide, I wonder if we are ever like this spiritually.  We feel so distant from our Heavenly Father that we have nearly no hope, but somehow we persevere and gather back to his warming arms.

Then we fall.  We commit our old goliath sin, then we do it again, and we fall back into an addiction (a good synonym for sin).  And I am not limiting this to addictions like alcohol, drugs, food, or pornography.  I include the addiction of comparing oneself to others, the addiction of criticizing, of being selfish, of being proud.  We feel ourselves slipping and we know how hard the journey back is.  And then comes our dangerous moment when we may spiritually torpedo ourselves believing that the journey back is impossible.

Sometimes we don't even want to make the journey.  It's easy to blame God, after all he's all-powerful.  He could ease our situation.  He promises to give us no trial we cannot endure, yet it seems to us that he has given us the exact trial we could not endure.  Let me submit that this is evidence that God knows you intimately and is mindful of you.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  I've endured trials that for the first time in my life I believe have made me weaker.  The trials of my mission made me a better missionary.  The trials of junior high and high school made me wiser through college.  For the first time I have had trials that haven't made me stronger.  Trials that have set me spiritually back literally years.  Trials that have left me grasping for breath, and then trials that have left me too emotionally exhausted to manage any kind of sustained clawback.  I am at that dangerous moment, and I only have one way out.

I must forgive God.

"Who is righteous? Anyone who is repenting.  No matter how bad he has been, if he is repenting, he is a good man.... And no matter how good he has been all his life, if he is not repenting, he is a wicked man.  The difference is which way you are facing."

--Hugh Nibley

I'm going to dig it up one of these days, but there's a passage from C.S. Lewis I read a few years ago where he said that sin, or a temptation, has never truly overcome us as long as we are still trying to overcome it.  It is so tempting to get depressed about our inability to overcome a trial, be it something as public as alcohol, as private as pornography, as sinister as gossip, or as seemingly innocent as gluttony.  And the million other sins in between.

I say sins because it has become unpopular to use that word.  We prefer softer words like bad habits, temptations, poor decisions, indiscretions, shortcomings, etc.  Those words are fine with me, but they're just like calling the garbage man a "waste manager" or civilian deaths in war "collateral damage."  The problem happens when we start acting like sin doesn't exist.  I know the prevailing opinion of my generation is that sin doesn't exist.  Sin has become so closely associated with "judging" that whenever the word "sin" is used, the immediate response is to condemn that person for "judging" someone else.

Maybe we just need to better explore what sin is, because sin is concrete and there's no use in calling an apple an orange just because you don't like the word apple.

We'll explore that more tomorrow.

Every January, despite total failure the year before, we make our New Year's resolutions.  We're four weeks into 2010 and I'm willing to bet you've forgotten your New Year's resolutions.

Here's my proposed solution:

Monthly Resolutions

A theme you'll see over and over again at Mormon Zen is that all major changes and projects must be tackled in small pieces.  That's the problem with New Year's Resolutions.  They are too extravagant and their deadline is too distant.

Monthly Resolutions can be different.  Imagine what you want yourself to be like in a month.  You must think small. Small tasks are easy to motivate ourselves to do, and once we start doing them we find it fairly easy to keep pressing forward, leading us to achieve more than our original goal.  In other word, achieve your ambitious goals by creating much simpler, easily achievable goals that will be easy to motivate yourself to do.  I'll be elaborating more on this in the coming days.

Here's my list of February Resolutions:

1)  Write 3 blog posts a week

2)  Do motion stretching each morning and evening for the length of whatever song I choose

3)  Be up by 7:30 every morning

I have several more ambitious goals that I am just not in a position to achieve yet.  For example, I want to become a published author.  That's a huge project, so much so that if I make that my goal/new year's resolution then I'll never get very far into because I'm overwhelmed by it.  Monthly resolutions should be geared toward facilitating these more ambitious goals.

These Monthly Resolutions are goals that are all easily achievable and which will facilitate my more ambitious goals.  For example, if I am writing at least 3 blog posts a week, that means I am pondering on scripture verses, praying, and simply taking time to not only ponder but also to record my insights.  Ultimately this will place me in tune with the Spirit in a way I haven't been since my mission; hopefully even more in tune.

And by motion stretching (arm-circles, touch the sky's, etc) for a few minutes every morning and evening, I'm going to relieve my muscles of the tightness that gets me uptight and stressed.  This will make me generally more pleasant and will greatly improve the odds that I'll achieve my more ambitious goal of going to the gym several days a week.  Good inspires more good, and bad inspires more bad.  A little exercise/motion stretching (good) will bring me to exercise a lot (more good).  If I don't bother to do my morning motion stretching (bad) then I'll be more likely to skimp on the gym (it reminds me of my extra few pounds!) and to eat junk food (more bad).

If I am up and out of bed by 7:30 each morning, I'll be less rushed in the morning which will make it easier to accomplish resolutions 1 and 2.  I won't feel like I've wasted my day like I do when I'm out of bed at 8:30 or 9:00.  I won't be pressed for time and have to shave off scripture study or prayers.  I'll be more at ease.  Acting without acting.

Give Monthly Resolutions a Try.  We'll see how we are doing come February 28th.  Feel free to email me your Monthly Resolutions.

--Mormon Zen