The day began mild and sunny, like most days in the Mojave Desert in early October. Nisha got a head start by doing 20 minutes of yoga and meditation. As she finished, she got a notification from the DHS.
“Rachel,” Nisha whispered. “The DHS wants to speak with us right now.”
“Okay. I’m still sleep deprived, and it’s only 05:30.”
“Yeah, but it’s 08:30 in DC.”
They were authenticated. On the screen were General Sherman, President Wilson, and many others they had never seen before.
“Good morning,” the President said. “First, I want to complement Dr. Chandra and Dr. Feynman for their excellent work on obtaining information about the aliens. You’ve gotten us to first base. Now it’s time to get the runner around to home plate.”
Nisha and Rachel glanced at each other knowingly, sensing a change. They didn’t need to say a word. In that instant, they were self-aware at a group level of two people. They didn’t know what Bok would say to that.
The President continued her talk.
“Now we’re ready to bring in the objectives experts. Their job is to monitor the world stage and make recommendations to me about how to proceed strategically, not only tactically as we’ve done up to this point.”
Nisha muted her voice for a moment.
“Strategically, not tactically,” she whispered as she rolled her eyes at Rachel out of the watchful eye of the camera.
They glanced at each other waiting for the hammer to fall. She stopped muting her voice.
“Nisha and Rachel,” the President said. “You’re experts in the fields of astrobiology, astronomy, geology, and physics. We still need you. However, we also need expertise in the fields of military strategy, weapons, and negotiation. So, we’re sending out the best of the best to help. The ChamAliens have—”
Nisha interrupted politely, trying to maintain her sense of calm which she enjoyed a few minutes earlier after her meditation.
“Madam President, I’m sorry to interrupt, but they call themselves the Omanji.”
“Oh, right. They refuse to establish contact with us, so we have little choice but to—”
Nisha interrupted again with a little more force.
“Madam President, they call themselves the Omanji and we’ve been making satisfactory progress establishing a rapport with the children. Soon we’ll know—”
“I’m sorry,” the President said. “It’s been entertaining watching you play with the children, but now serious work needs to be done. Don’t worry, we still need your knowledge and expertise, but we need to go to the next level.”
Nisha and Rachel were boiling inside. They held each other’s hand tightly under the table off camera.
The President continued talking.
“Right now, the team of objectives experts is flying to Edwards Air Force Base which is a 30-minute drive from your location. By the afternoon, they’ll join you and will take the lead in establishing contact with the Oma-ni.”
Nisha couldn’t help herself.
“They call themselves the Omanji, Madam President. They call their home planet Oma.”
“Right,” the President said in a nonchalant way. “The objectives experts will take the lead in establishing contact with the Omanji. I’m sorry but I must go. Many things are happening right now.”
Everyone signed off. Nisha kept her audio stream off for the time being, but she turned on her video in case something happened.
Nisha snarled and tweeted text for the first time in two days. “Rachel and I will no longer be leading the effort to contact the #Omanji. The objectives experts will be in charge from now on.”
She followed her tweet immediately with another.
“I’ll give you updates and be as open as possible. I’m still on the team. I’ll still broadcast video and audio if possible.”
Nisha stared into her eyepiece, rereading the text of the last two tweets repeatedly. She tried to sound upbeat, but she felt devastated. She turned to Rachel and teared up.
“I won’t be able to find Priya now. They’ll screw it up and I’ll never talk to her again. The Omanji could send us to extinction. I hoped this might turn out okay, but now I’ve never felt such despair.”
She broke down, slumping to the floor of their tent.
Rachel put her hand on Nisha’s shoulder and helped her onto her cot.
“Lie down here for a while. You need rest. If you think the game is over, think again. We’re warriors! If we play our cards right, this can still work out. The Omanji are still in charge, despite the best made plans of Presidents and objectives experts. The children only talk with us.”
Nisha managed a weak smile.
“I hope you’re right. Okay, I’m going to stay here in the tent for a while. You go on and eat breakfast.”
“Okay, meet me in the mess tent when you’re ready. We’ll discuss what we can do next. Another 50 spheres entered Earth’s orbit last night. That makes 200. So, 200 million Omanji might be down here on Earth and in orbit. The Omanji are in command, and you have the best connection with them right now so don’t forget that.”
“Thanks Rachel, you’re a real friend,” Nisha said. “I won’t let them push me around and I’m going to get those kids back. Go ahead and I’ll eat with you in a few minutes. Also, I should add that you and I have the best connection with them, not only me.”
Rachel left to walk to the mess tent. Nisha sat on her cot. A strange notification appeared in her eyepiece. It wasn’t for a voice or video connection. The notification wasn’t from Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or from any app she had installed on her eyepiece.
The notification said, “Incoming message, Accept or Ignore.”
She hesitated for a long while because the notification might be from some secret agency which hacked her eyepiece. It might also be from a worm, or an AI bot. She chose to ignore the notification. However, 10 seconds later it appeared again, this time the message blinked.
“Urgent message for Nisha from Bok: accept or ignore.”
She hesitated again. She decided to take a chance. She accepted the message. Something was installing on her eyepiece. She thought, “I knew it. I’m going to wipe the memory clean now.”
She tried to reset the eyepiece, but it wouldn’t respond while the installation progressed. She wanted to remove the battery but didn’t have the proper tools.
The installation finished. The virtual screen in her eyepiece went blank for several seconds, long enough for Nisha to think her eyepiece stopped functioning. She was about to give up when another message appeared in a bubble in a window which looked like it came from one of those old-fashioned texting apps.
“Hello Nisha, this message is from Bok. Please reply if possible.”
Nisha still imagined it must be a prank or some test of loyalty where her failure to perform up to expectations might get her fired or worse.
She decided to reply.
“This is Nisha, please wait a few minutes.”
Nisha raced out of her tent and up the hill. Within seconds she entered the mess tent. Rachel sat at a table by herself.
“Rachel, check this out,” Nisha said with her shaky voice. “What do you think? At first, I thought I had an AI bot, but now I’m not sure.”
Nisha shared Bok’s message with Rachel’s eyepiece. She read the message.
“It seems real, but if I were you, I would make sure this is real. Ask him to prove that it’s him.”
Nisha thought about how to reply.
“Hello Bok. I need to make sure this is you. Do something which no human could do, but only I would understand.”
She waited for the reply with Rachel hanging on every word. Finally, a message came back.
“Pay attention to level 241 of the fourth tower from the left side of my colony from your perspective. In two minutes, I’ll shine a blue laser at you so only you can notice it. Your eyes won’t be harmed.”
She whispered the message to Rachel.
They walked outside of the mess tent so they could have an unobstructed view of the colony. Nisha located the fourth tower from the left and began counting. The silver reflective shell had slight curves on each level, allowing her to count. Level 241 was about halfway to the top, with each level being about 18-20 feet tall in her estimation. She stared at Bok’s location. A blue laser star appeared and then disappeared. This happened again a few seconds later.
Soon thereafter, Nisha got another message from Bok.
“Nisha?”
“Yes, I’m glad you contacted me. I assume you learned I wouldn’t be officially contacting you in person for the time being. A team of humans called the objectives experts from the US government will be trying to contact the Omanji elders. I don’t place much faith in governmental organizations even if they mean well. I’m glad you wish to continue contact with Rachel and me.”
“I also don’t place confidence in bureaucracy as you call it, especially among the Omanji Esteemed Elders, who are the elected leaders,” Bok messaged. “One must be at least 300 years old to become an Esteemed Elder. Our government has become stale. In many ways, I don’t wish to merge with the collective awareness because I’ll become part of the bureaucracy. Many younger Omanji agree with me. Your objectives experts will fail because the Omanji elders think humans are only animals which are slightly more evolved than the other animals on this planet. They think humans make good pets and otherwise can be tolerated just as humans tolerate and live amongst other animals on the earth.”
“They consider us to be only animals?” Nisha messaged.
“Yes, the elders don’t wish to kill off the humans and other Earth animals for the same reason humans don’t wish to kill other non-food animals on this planet. They consider humans to be part of the ecosystem of this planet. They would like to maintain that ecology. However, the elders consider this to be their planet now. They call Earth, New Oma. Nothing your experts can say or do can change that. Humans are irrelevant in their minds.”
Nisha’s eyes opened wide and didn’t reply for a while.
“Nisha, are we connected?” Bok messaged.
“Yes, I’m okay. I’m in shock. I suppose I knew this all along. I noticed how they expressed no interest in us. We’re only one of many animal species here on this planet. Earth used to be our planet when we were at the evolutionary apex, but now the Omanji sit at the apex. The Earth is now theirs.”
Another message from Bok appeared.
“I’m watching you speak with Rachel. Tell her I said hi.”
Rachel read the automatically forwarded message in her eyepiece, smiled, and waved to the fourth tower on the left.
“He is the politest alien I know.” Rachel said.
A smiley face from Bok appeared in an old-school text-app style bubble.
“Thank you, Bok,” Nisha messaged. “Here comes a caravan of military trucks. It’s probably the objectives experts. I want us to stay in close contact. Don’t let anyone, human or Omanji stop us from talking. Okay?”
“Agreed,” messaged Bok. “Contact me whenever you want. Bye.”
“Bye,” Nisha messaged.
“Can you believe this Rachel? We’re texting old-school with an alien being.”
“Yeah, I believe anything these days. Sometimes I think this is only a dream, from which I will awake at any moment, but I know it’s real.”
Nisha stopped smiling.
“This is real. I’m glad I didn’t turn on my audio and video stream. If people realized the Omanji consider Earth to be theirs now, a complete financial collapse might happen. Society could collapse. It’s on the verge. The stock market is already down 60%. I wanted to be transparent, but now I realize I shouldn’t disclose everything.”
“Yes, we need to be careful,” Rachel said. “We’re becoming one of ‘them’, but in this case, it’s for the best. For now, I don’t think we should tell anyone we’re still in touch with Bok.”
“I agree,” Nisha said.
The convoy of trucks drew near, raising a cloud of dust behind them.
“Let’s play along and let them make their attempts at communication with the Omanji.”
Nisha tried to keep up a positive energy outlook, but she felt like the government would make things worse. She decided to make the best of the situation.
The convoy of about 20 large trucks from Edwards Air Force Base came to a halt right outside of Nisha’s and Rachel’s tent, raising a huge dust cloud which enveloped all of them in an orange haze. Nisha rushed over to close the tent flaps to keep the dust out. They walked over to greet the caravan.
A large man in a military uniform stepped out of the first truck.
“Dr. Chandra and Dr. Feynman, it’s good to meet you.”
It took Nisha a few seconds to realize that General Sherman was the person talking.
“Oh, General Sherman, I didn’t know you would be in the objectives experts’ group.”
“Nisha, you can call me Lucas. I’m the chairman of the group. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“No, nobody told me anything other than the objectives experts would be taking over,” Nisha said. “So, I’ve been waiting to find out who they’ll be. Rachel and I will be assisting you. We can start now. What should we do first?”
Lucas paused for a minute as he directed his supplies to be put into the new tent he set up near Nisha’s and Rachel’s tent.
“The President and Congress ordered us to make contact with the alien leadership.”
“Lucas, they call themselves the Omanji.”
He nodded his head impatiently.
“Right, the Omanji. We intend on executing several strategies to make contact. They’re building this colony, which I can’t describe with words. Since they aren’t leaving anytime soon, it’s imperative we establish good relations with them. There’s much we can learn from them. I know your daughter is in there. I sympathize with you since my daughter is about Priya’s age. She wasn’t abducted, so I can’t imagine what you’re going through. The President decided this situation is too emotionally intense for you to deal with in an objective way. That’s why she removed you as the lead investigator.”
Nisha glanced at Rachel and winked knowingly. At least there was some acknowledgment.
“Thanks. Let me know how I can be of assistance Lucas. I’m here when you need me. I’ll do the best job I can.”
“I’m glad you’re taking this so well. I’ll let you know how you can assist us. I’m going to get settled and we’ll have our first meeting tomorrow at 06:00 hours.”
The General and his entourage walked back to the convoy to direct the moving of the supplies into a line of tents which were constructed within the past few hours. Soldiers arranged an endless line of gadgets and ammunition on tables.
Rachel and Nisha walked back to their tents.
“Nisha, what are they doing with the ammo?” Rachel said in a faint voice. “It’s useless and might get us killed.”
Nisha glanced at the trucks being unloaded.
“I don’t know what they’re doing. We need to keep away from the action. I don’t want to be associated with any weapons. It’s suicide.”
Later, Nisha and Rachel watched another sunset filter through the reflective canyons of the ever-expanding colony. Nisha was in a trance as she gazed out over the vast expanse of it.
“Rachel, how many towers do you think they’ve built? I used to be able to count them, but they’re at least 6,000 feet tall and even our elevated view from the side of this mountain is now obstructed.”
Rachel reviewed the latest numbers from her eyepiece.
“Another 50 large spheres entered orbit today. That makes 250 in total. It’s about a 1 to 1 ratio. My guess is they’ll need 250 towers to house everyone. Dozens of towers are in the process of being built, but I would say over 200 towers are finished based on this morning’s satellite view.”
“Let’s turn in early,” Nisha said. “I think we’ll need our wits about us in tomorrow’s meeting. We don’t want to say anything that would jeopardize our place here.
“Agreed,” Rachel said.