Flash Fiction Friday: New Phone. Who This?

Today's story takes us back to the AI Universe immediately following the events of "Unauthorized Call."

While those who have read the AI series up until this point will have a deeper understanding of what is going on, the flash fiction is written from the point-of-view of a character who doesn't know what is going on. So, no prior knowledge is needed at all to understand the fic.

New Phone. Who This?
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“I’m gonna need you to put both of those remaining brain cells together and work with me here, okay?” Adelaide hissed.

Madeline and Shawn flinched and nodded. 

“What was the message you sent out?”

“Just a basic hello,” Maddie squeaked, shrugging as she shrunk back under her sister’s glare.

Adelaide arched an eyebrow at the two of them. The skepticism in her expression spoke louder than any sort of yelling could have managed.

“She’s more or less telling the truth,” Sullivan said, “figuratively speaking.”

“No identifying information or location?” Adelaide asked.

Shawn shook his head so hard Maddie found herself a bit worried he’d scramble his brain. “No sense adding a location with us flying through as fast as we can, and it’s not like our ship name would mean anything to aliens, right?”

“Not what I’m talking about, kid,” Adelaide shot back with a frown. “Did you say anything about being human?”

He looked as confused as she felt, but Shawn still went pallid. “What’s so bad about being human?”

Ignoring Shawn’s question, Adelaide turned to Lieutenant Sullivan. This had the side effect of getting Maddie’s hackles up and scaring her even more. What was going on?

“You said you stopped the call almost immediately?”

Now it was Sullivan’s turn to grimace. “Emphasis on almost.”

“How long was almost?”

“Ten minutes?” Lieutenant Sullivan fidgeted in place. “I didn’t find record of exactly when it started, but I cut power the second I located the origin point.”

Adelaide’s expression morphed into one Maddie hadn’t seen since that day in the docking bay, and the seriousness of the situation began to dawn on Madeline. Her big sister wasn’t one to get worked up over the small stuff, and whatever they were afraid they’d caught the attention of with their call into the void had her just as spooked as them nearly getting spaced.

“How long has it been since you stopped it?” Adelaide asked.

“Not sure,” Sullivan answered. Her eyes unfocused, and she chewed on her bottom lip for a second. “It took me another hour or so to find an excuse to come out here, fifteen minutes to find Marsters’ signature, and,” her voice trailed off, and she tapped her chin while thinking, “maybe half an hour to track them down?”

“So approximately two hours, give or take,” Adelaide murmured to herself. “Have we run a sweep of the local area since Z3X899Y7?”

Lieutenant Sullivan shook her head. “You kidding?”

Adelaide rolled her eyes and nodded in that way that screamed, “Of course not,” without her having to say a word.

“Well, if you want to clean this up without starting a panic, we’re going to have to handle it ourselves.”

They all nodded.

“No sweeps for five months. So, we’re flying blind.”

“In a ship that might as well be a dingy without a motor compared to the ones the locals have,” Sullivan added.

Madeline felt her stomach drop into her shoes at the confirmation they weren’t alone out here. She and Shawn had figured it was statistically unlikely humanity was all alone, which is why they’d sent the call in the first place. Yet, no matter how much she racked her brain, she couldn’t remember hearing a single thing about other space faring species. Maybe she ought to suggest they have a history cram session since it sounds like whoever these locals are, they had a history with them, and it wasn’t a pleasant one.

“Any chance we could send out scrambled feeds, maybe fire off some dummies to confuse our trail?” Adelaide asked. “Make it look like an old, malfunctioning probe passed through?”

“Maybe,” Sullivan agreed. “Though I don’t know how we’d launch them without alerting engineering.”

“Calibrating the diagnostic system takes each sensor offline for a couple minutes,” Shawn said, breaking into the conversation. “We’d just need to coordinate a manual launch with sensors being down.”

Adelaide looked to Sullivan, whose color was starting to normalize for the first time in a while. Her posture relaxed just a bit, which made Madeline feel better about whatever was going on.

“Let’s get to it then,” she said. “Let operation butts out of the fire commence.”