Consolidation Earth
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So, I began my involvement with the murky world of military intelligence. It was not immediately clear exactly what my status was: not really a prisoner - no chains, no locks, and an official pass which would allow me into at least some areas - but I could not leave, could not communicate externally without both permission and supervision, and an expectation that I would answer any questions I was asked. I did not know exactly where I was, either, although it was definitely in space - the slight variations in gravity which is imparted by a large spinning structure were unmistakeable - as well as the trajectory of the windowless shuttle which brought me here. Also, I had no contact at all with any friends or colleagues, including Ken and Ted; I suspected that those two were undergoing similar treatment elsewhere. Over the first few days, I was asked to go over what I had discovered, several times with several different audiences, at least one of which included somebody with a decent working knowledge of the state of the art in nanotechnology, and another who had little understanding of the technology, but was much more focussed on who might have the political will and the technical ability to pull off such a feat. I had not mentioned the possibility of genuine aliens being behind the Nano-suppressors, although I was soon tackled on this point by somebody who had closely reviewed the email exchanges between myself and Ken. "Well, logically, his hypothesis is consistent with the evidence," I said reasonably, when challenged, "So it would be an error to exclude it as a possibility. But there's no positive confirmation for it and, in the absence of any other evidence for the existence of aliens, it remains pure speculation." My anonymous questioner went very still and silent at that point, and rapidly wrapped up that particular interview. I was asked - not that I really had a choice - to attend an interview with an arrested Expansionist sympathiser, a woman called N'kone Memetja. I had read somewhere that the Expansionists had a policy that, since their interstellar ships started departing and there was nothing anybody could do to stop them, of answering all questions put to them fully and honestly. Ms. Memetja still resided in a prison cell, of course, and in orbit - which was supposed to reduce the likelihood of escape - but not a particularly uncomfortable one, more like a room in a medium-standard hotel, although with less choice of room service. After another orbital trip in another windowless shuttle, and an interminable walk through kilometres of corridors of grey lunar concrete in the company of a nameless guide, I was introduced to the lady herself. In person, she was a slender woman with long braids, with a piercing gaze and intelligent attitude. I was encouraged to sit across a desk from her, without the kind of handshake greeting that I might have expected and asked to tell her all about my discovery. I talked briefly about my background, and the nature of the work I was undertaking, or trying to. I showed her pictures of the Nano-suppressors in action and explained in some detail what they were capable of; her face was a picture, horrified and disgusted in equal measure. When I had wound down, my guide asked her: "Did the Expansionists, to your knowledge, create these things?" She shook her head firmly and said, "No. We concentrated our efforts on super-strong bulk materials, carbon nanotubes and the like, to make spaceships. Nothing this intricate. Or destructive." As my guide and I were preparing to leave, Ms. Memetja asked a question which was quite definitely not in the script: "Is this to do with the evidence of aliens amongst us? Influencing everything? Controlling everything?" I cannot describe the shock and horror I felt, even as I was hustled out of the interview room and down the concrete corridors at a quick march. My guide refused to answer, or even acknowledge, any questions, even when I was firmly strapped into the shuttle for the return trip. Those few words from Ms. Memetja had flipped Ken's hypothesis from speculation to certainty in my head; as I sat stewing in my own thoughts, I wondered about what other alien influences there might be. The shuttle's engines lit up with a roar, the acceleration pushing me back into my seat as the engine thrust exceeded the compensation available from the inertial suppressors. This triggered a thought: our inertial suppressors - artificial gravity, if you like - are limited to three-and-a-bit gravities, limiting the maximum speed that spacecraft can achieve even when crewed by trained astronauts in high-G suits. But when those Expansionists lit up their interstellar craft in the Oort Cloud, they were accelerating much faster than that - twenty or twenty-five G, or even more. Somehow the Expansionists who had escaped from the Solar system had managed to avoid that particular limitation, perhaps simply by having run away before the whatever influence the aliens could exert, leaving us left behind trapped in a single stellar system. The very best zoos do their utmost to avoid making the enclosures too obvious to the creatures so contained. The people living on and around Earth - like me, for example - were quite used to working with technology which was well-developed by the middle of the twenty-first century, with nothing radically new being developed since then. I was suddenly sure I was not going to be allowed to tell anybody about all this.
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Part 4
