How did it come back to us? It has only been 20 years. Puzzled, Dr Chen Hang sipped his bourbon while looking into the night sky. How is this possible he thought? The Doctor was hysterical and nervous. The anxiety of tomorrow and what to make of this event left him sleepless. What would the team find? He set the gramophone to symphony 5. It had always calmed the professor down. Listening to the symphony, he sat on the chair and stared into the stars. He set an alarm for 7:30 AM and drifted into sleep.

The doctor was the chief scientist at SETI and had been in charge of the installation for 23 months. His latest paper face like structures on Mars had been much praised in the community for its enquiry into wishful thinking. SPSR, Society for Planetary SETI research, was going to extend his position for couple of more months given the onset of the unexpected. Chen wanted to get away from the administrative responsibilities and focus on his research. He thought that he was more fit leading a team to pursue research than thinking about if the floor needed more coffee machines. For Chen it was not going to be this simple as there was nothing ordinary about the day when SPSR extended his directorship.

He reached the Bernando Avenue the next morning at 8 AM. Dr Mankar was waiting for him in the main hall of auditorium -I. Dr Mankar was as nervous and excited as Dr Chen. “Did you get in any sleep?”. Dr Chen fumbling and a little overwhelmed could not process anything. “You know the contents are already here professor” said Mankar. Dr Chen looked at him and his eyes grew wide. “Did you start assessing them already?” asked Chen with a puzzled face. “Of course, you did not expect me to sit on it!” exclaimed Mankar. “We have started logging the items against what the NASA has sent for items on Voyager. I also made a copy of one of the files and mailed you this morning” “Is it really the Voyager” asked Chen with a child like curiosity. Dr Mankar in a hushed voice exclaimed “It has to be, but how escapes me. Did it encounter a slingshot? or perhaps a worm..” Dr Chen cut Mankar off with utter dismissal “A worm hole? Mankar lets get this job done first and there will be much time speculations for later. God knows there are already so many god and alien theories the media is spinning away” “Where is it? Is Marta in the … Where are the things being kept? 1C?” Mankar chose to answer only the last of the questions.

The items were being kept in a conference room as SETI had never anticipated such a scenario and built a containment facility. “NASA and CDC have already looked through them anyway for signs of foreign elements and mutations of every kind” . “Our job is to look for anything and everything, get me the list” ordered Chen as Mankar led the way to the conference room 1C.

Mankar was sure that he would be the one to make the discovery and break the news to the world. He was more interested in the intelligence life narrative than finishing up the task that SETI was assigned for.

Voyager was sent in September 5 1977 to study the outer solar system with primary objective to study Jupiter, Saturn and Titan. It was programmed and installed with scientific instruments to study weather, magnetic fields and rings of the two planets. The voyager was powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators and lost power in 2025 when it made the last telecast to Earth. It was also carrying the Golden record, as did every Voyager space probe in the event that it ever encountered an alien civilisation. The record consisted of an audiovisual disc. It carries the photos of Earth, information about its life forms, messages from the then President Carter and UN Secretary General, “Sounds of Earth”- the sound of whales, waves breaking on a shore and a collection of music, and greetings in 55 different languages”

The Voyager Golden Record.

Cover of the Voyager Golden Record.

NASA had broken the golden record into 6 files for processing at SETI. Each file had a different content than the other. File A contained photos of earth, File B contained information about life forms and respectively the File E contained greetings in 55 different languages. The team at SETI was going through all this information even though it was highly unlikely that something here would turn up. This was more to do with having second set of eyes look at something which was most probably insignificant. But that would let doctors be less excited about the affair anyhow. More interested they were about coming up with various theories that would have brought the voyager back to Earth after complete 10 year radio silence.

Greetings in English

“There had to be a minimum of two slingshots for voyager to have again set on the primary path and at least one slingshot had to be more than 270 degrees” exclaimed Steinfeld. Steinfeld and Marta were from different department and would often bump into each other during the lunch hours. They would mostly discuss about their work and eventually talk about the lack of it being interesting. Today was the first time they were working together on something they would discuss over numerous lunches in future. “Or if it sped up around a black hole?”. “Right near our system?.. I don’t think so” refuted Marta. “What if it was sent back to us” she questioned. “By Aliens you mean?”

“Yes, that is right up there with your two slingshot theory” retorted Marta. “If there was an alien civilisation right around heliosphere, it would definitely do more than just send something back and why would it not have communicated all this while and playing ball now” mocked Steinfeld. “Heliosphere is 50AU from Earth, which means it would have taken 13 years for the voyager to come back. But it has been 20 years and in the 7 years gap it could not have made it much far. Surely the aliens are not waiting in the interstellar neighbourhood. And more over nothing has been recovered from the Voyager”

“Alright!” sighed Marta. It was clear that Steinfeld had been consumed by the possibilities and was obsessed about Voyagers return. Steinfeld smirked and took the File D over to the sound engineers.

The team at 1C also included a personnel from NASA and 8 sound engineers to process the sounds, and three content experts to verify various other materials. There was another person whom everyone assumed to be from NASA but he wasn’t talking to anyone and just observing every other person. Mankar assumed that Dr Chen knew every person who were going to be a part of this team, so never enquired.

The strange man

It took four days until there was something that brought a rather uneventful scrutiny in 1C to a hush-hush under the breath whisper. The strange man and the sound engineer 7 stepped outside the room and within few minutes rushed back in to seize the recordings that the engineer was analysing and quickly addressed the team.

“Thank you for your cooperation, unfortunately the investigation can no longer proceed as one of the recordings is missing. We will commence the investigation once NASA sends the complete artefacts to SETI. Thank you again.”

Dr Chen could clearly understand that something was found and this was a clear case of shabby cover up. Perhaps something was found and needed to be first analyzed at where ever that strange man belonged to. The brief email Dr Chen had received from Science Mission Directorate, did mention about a government official who would be accompanying the NASA.

Within hours everything from the voyager was on its way back to NASA. Chen and the team saw the efficiency and the clockwork of the NASA attache. The attache arranged the transport with a quick phone call and arranged for all the contents to be taken back. Soon Dr Chen got an email from the Directorate that they would be sending the contents again. He knew then that this was the last time they would ever hear anything about the Voyager contents on the official channels. Steinfeld was particularly disappointed as he had wanted to be in the forefront of any discovery that voyager brought along. But as it happened all the hullabaloo ebbed away in a matter of hours and everyone returned back back home calling it a day.

Chen was part happy that he did not have to serve as the director and could move the committee to end his tenure as the Chief scientist, perhaps even recommend Dr Mankar for the position. To him a day spent going over the observational logs was far more enriching than spending the day at complete leisure.

As Chen drove back to his house on Elizabeth Street, he could see the full moon shimmering over the Bay of San francisco. The lights on the 84th were not really pleasant to look at though. Tired from almost a week long laborious tasks of managing all the commotion and painstakingly going over the golden records multiple times, he decided he could get some drinks and listen to the gramophone record while doing what he loves best — staring into the night sky. He poured bourbon for himself, put the symphony 5 on the gramophone and made place for himself under the stars. He could see the red planet lined up alongside Venus and Mercury and that was something that made him happy. But something was missing, the music wouldn’t start. He got up and checked the gramophone. To his dismay, he found that the gramophone pin was damaged and he had completely forgotten about it. The doctor generally was not forgetful but the stress of the week that went by left him a little out of grain. But now with all that wrapped up, he remembered that Dr Mankar had sent some Files from Golden record. He plugged in his laptop and put it to speaker.

Chen walked over the cold grass of rather warm September, took out his shoes and sat against the wall. Sipping his bourbon over perfectly spherical ice, he felt serene. He was at peace. Prelude and Fugue by Bach had just ended and to his amazement the 5th came on next. There was something about the Symphony 5 that Dr Chen had a particular fascination for. Beethoven took almost utter negligence while composing the symphony. He had started composing it alongside the 3rd and took 4 years before it was complete. His repetitive musings with the tune was because it was imperfect and it was all in the third movement that he loved — so close to perfection and composed so laxly.

The bourbon was almost over when the third movement, Scherzo allegro, began. He paused and he smiled. He would not have made it out earlier, but the third movement sounded perfect. The third movement aboard the Voyager which returned back to Earth was perfect.