✅ Project SETI Trilogy

Chapter Two - Part XVII: Appearances

          Julia Nguyen, the head doctor of Project SETI, sat alone at a large conference table lined with chairs of different shapes and sizes. Along the middle were holograph projectors and other transmission implements, all turned on but idling for the meeting to come. The room itself had the internal lights turned off; it was illuminated solely by the sun reflecting off of the stark white skyscraper across from the wall-to-wall window, which lent it the same strange atmosphere of a completely vacant, yet mysteriously well-kept liminal space.

          Julia had begun to bounce her leg impatiently when the locked door finally clicked open, and the rest of the meeting's participants filed into the room. Melika Ali, Project SETI's former anesthesiologist, was among them, along with Major Dean Stanton, the chief SDC officer from the local sector, and Sam Lancaster, the Executive Director of the Bureau of Sensitive Affairs—a branch of global government that had been created specifically for extra-terrestrial communication and other such sensitive matters.

          "Sorry for making you wait," the Executive Director said to Julia as they all found their seats. "Someone had forgotten to give Ms. Ali clearance and it was holding us up."

          "It's okay," she flashed a small smile. "I was early."

          "Right. Well, as you all know, I have summoned you here to discuss the disappearance of Nova Tepez and Gabriel Dejarlais. I need all the facts to proceed with a proper investigation—including everything that happened during the lockdown at Project SETI. Shall we begin there?"

          Julia and Melika spent the next few minutes giving their own personal accounts of what happened. The initial lockdown had started during a surgical procedure with Nova and it wasn't lifted until the next morning, when he was in labor. Then lockdown was called again, pretty much right after he'd delivered. Melika explained that she'd woken up just before the second lockdown announcement to a large strange man in pale blue scrubs rummaging around her personal items in the hospital room. She was still too weak from her overdose to actually do anything about it, and her identification was stolen.

          The rest of the blanks were filled in by the security footage Julia brought from Project SETI and the parking facility connected to it. The perpetrators had very clearly been after Nova—and by proxy, Gabriel. According to the video, they got away in Gabriel's old ship, but nobody had seen the vessel since it left the parkade.

          "I admit... I didn't take his family seriously when they came to me with this holograph transmission," the Major spoke after the holograph message had played for everyone to see. "There's nothing too weird about it. Young people running away from their parents isn't anything new, right? But they insisted this was different and Nova wouldn't do that and what have you, so I inspected the holograph as they asked. I found artifacting on it that suggests the point of origin is somewhere very far away, but when I tried to check... I found that all the metadata is random garbage. Here's a copy of it, for your own records."

          Sam took the small datacard from him and nodded thoughtfully. "That is rather difficult to ignore."

          "Gabriel wouldn't just leave either, y'know," Julia interjected. "You must know all about what he used to do. He was hiding here on Earth and even told me he'd never leave again, for his own safety."

          "Yes, I am aware, Dr. Nguyen," Sam replied.

          "And that last meeting we had with the Daxut officials," she continued, "it was weird... I mean, they must have known we weren't going to let them buy a surrogate."