(This is a sequel to the Astologist story, following Stephen Rook’s son.)
Joseph Rook got a good look at his father’s obituary. Thought he had only been twelve at the time, he had a decent enough idea of what went wrong. All of the fluff and the “accolades” for the deceased father, colleague, and writer missed one crucial detail. Actually, “missed” probably wasn’t the right word. Glossed over, more like. As Joseph grew up he started to learn more and more that his father, the man who had tossed him on his knee, the man who had cheered him on in little league, the man who had given him a deep hug when the government men came to collect him, was a fraud.
It came little by little. He saw the word astrologer and looked it up. What he found was search result upon search result of people declaring the people to be positively loony. Especially now that mankind was colonizing other planets in systems far away, how anybody could believe that the potential in the stars was only meant for life on Earth was beyond little Joseph.
He made himself a promise, that he would not be like his father. He started by reading everything he could. Friends, family and the outside world disappeared for years while he consumed. Joseph loved to spend his days, where ever society demanded he be, nose in a book.
Around the time that he started high school, Joseph started programming. He created small, simple games at first. Over time these became more and more complicated, until he stuck on the idea of AI. Of course, artificial intelligence was more advanced every day, but he endeavored to discover it himself, only looking at others’ work when he needed direction.
A pleasant side effect of being stuck in a book was that Joseph excelled in school. He graduated high school and, remembering his father’s predicament, decided to major in linguistics. College was a blur. While all of the other students wasted time partying and finding themselves (often face down on a futon in a strange room) Joseph blazed through his classes, graduating a year earlier than his peers. As he stepped out of the college with diploma in hand, he knew he was ready.
The aliens had only spread over the past nine years. Space travel was becoming more and more difficult, and any attempts to communicate with them were fruitless. Joseph, however, had a burning desire to see peace.
He started by finding every recording of the creatures he could. From the live feeds of the soldiers who were torn apart before his father, to the attack on a human base on Pluto, there was plenty of it. At first he tried to listen and discern a pattern, but quickly found that it would be fruitless. He then turned to programming, attempting at first to create a simple program that would count each syllable, consonant and try to form a pattern. Once it was complete, he set it to run through all of the data he had.
With such a large pool of data, Joseph knew that it would take a long time. He found a job at a tech company as a translator to occupy his time and to help pay for continued upgrades to his computer.
Five years passed. Joseph found a woman named Marigold who made him smile and had a son. He named him Stephen, after his father. He hadn’t forgotten about his obsession, however. He had collected a few servers and had them running day and night to try and discern a pattern. He occasionally modified his program, and filled his spare time with long sessions at his computer with eyes reflecting lines of code.
Then, one day, it was done.
“Mary! Mary!” Joseph could hardly contain his excitement. His entire life had been leading up to this moment. As Mary burst into the room holding a fire extinguisher, the progress bar on Joseph’s computer counted down. 3… 2… 1…
Hello.
The words seemed to leap off the screen. Joseph spun his chair around, ready to leap up and hug his wife when he noticed what she was holding. “What’s up with that?” he asked, a bewildered expression on his face.
Mary’s face got red and she lowered the fire extinguisher sheepishly. “I thought the old HP server was on fire again.” She grinned and set the fire extinguisher by the wall and moved to her husband’s chair. “So, big news?”
“It’s done. The program completed. It’s translated their language!” Joseph didn’t need to say who’s. Mary knew about her husband’s obsession and usually just rolled her eyes. Now, however, she was deadly serious.
“So you’re going?” Mary knew better than to tell him not to go. She knew how much this meant to him. She never really thought it would work, though. Lots of people had dreams, but most people never got to realize them. She had always assumed that some day he would move on. Now the moment was here, however, and she knew what it meant.
Joseph, aware of his wife’s feelings, tried to think of a response. It was an unspoken truth in their relationship, that Mary was content to stay on Earth forever so long as she had Joseph and Stephen. She wasn’t concerned with the lack of expansion in space, only with her family. Stephen, however, knew this was what he was meant to do. Failing to come up with any reassuring words, Joseph simply nodded, feeling his eyes start to well up. He stood and embraced his wife.
They both cried for a short while before Mary pulled away and held Joseph by the shoulders. “Be careful?” Mary didn’t dare tell Joseph what to do, and vice versa. It was a plea, more than anything. Joseph looked into her beautiful blue eyes and smiled.
“Of course.”
The doorbell rang and everybody looked up. Little Stephen was concerned mostly with his animal crackers, but Mary and Joseph met each other’s eyes and the concern in her eyes was placated with the excitement in his. As Mary went to the door, Joseph ran upstairs to his office and grabbed a small device, unplugging it from his computer and bolting back down the stairs. He could hear polite conversation being made in the entryway. That stopped when he arrived.
Major Sloan met his eyes. “Mr Rook. Are you ready?” Joseph smiled.
“Yes sir.” They didn’t waste a moment. Joseph hugged his wife and left the house. Stephen came into the entryway as the car pulled away. After a brief pause, he turned to his mother.
“Where’s daddy going?” he asked, curious.
“Daddy’s going to save the universe.” Mary smiled and patted her son’s head. “Now come on, we’ve got cookies to make.”
“We’ve been shot at, our territories have been taken, and we have lost many good soldiers.”
Joseph stared at the device. He couldn’t believe that it had been something so simple. He typed out his reply.
“We are sorry. We were not aware of your presence, and from our perspective you appeared from nowhere to destroy our ships.” As the device output a sound that sounded a lot like nails on a chalkboard, Joseph puzzled over what he could say next. “What can be done to make this right?”
The military personnel regarded the aliens with suspicion, and Joseph didn’t blame them. It had taken all of his persuasive skills to get them to leave their weapons behind, and if this failed he knew he was almost certainly doomed. Everything seemed to be going well, however.
The response came and Joseph consulted his device. “We have discovered many other sentient species such as yourself. Can you decipher their languages so that we may have peace with them as well?”
“Absolutely.”
Many years later, human spaceflight is unhindered. Joseph formed his own company to create a personal translator that quickly became standard issue for military personnel, merchants, and later, the general populace.
Peace had finally arrived, and Joseph had been the one to bring it.
MrZakGuy 