Andrew Mackay: Infinity Claws

As the hiss died down and the “strumming” of the guitar loudened, a dog trundled in the distance. It wondered what was going on.

Whump . The second jolt within the message flew through the screen. Spooky meowed loudly and curled up in Samantha’s arms.

“How is she now?” Tripp asked.

“She’s purring.”

“My God,” Dimitri leaned into the recording, “Are you trying to tell us that the cat is responding to Saturn Cry?”

Tripp slammed his palm into the holographic recording, pausing it. A freeze-frame of the dog showed its silly face all confused.

“That’s right. Interestingly, Sparky, our dog, isn’t responding at all.”

Dimitri turned to his superior, Maar Sheck, the CEO of USARIC. “Maar?”

“Tripp?” Maar placed his hands onto the edge of the console. “Are you trying to tell me that your cat can read the message?”

“No. I’m not saying that.”

“So you’re saying…” Maar tried before resigning to confusion. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the message is eliciting a response from my cat, and not my dog.”

Maar folded his arms and shook his head. “Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old, Mr Healy.”

“Keep watching.”

Tripp resumed the video. The static crept over the guitar’s strings and provided the final boom as the recording closed. Spooky’s eyes bulged. She let out a long wail.

Tripp paused the video. “There are three distinct bumps in the audio. The first occurs at twelve seconds. It angers the cat. The second bump happens at exactly twenty seconds, which appears to makes her comfortable.”

“And the third bump?” Maar asked.

“As you saw, it made her howl like a dog. It happens at the twenty-six second mark.”

Maar pointed at the paused Sparky. “And the dog?”

“He didn’t respond at all,” Tripp shrugged his shoulders. “He may as well have been listening to Strauss. No reaction whatsoever.”

“Have we tried other animals?” Dimitri asked.

“I’m glad you asked that, because that was my first thought. Here’s a selection of other animals we played the track to.”

Up first, a recording of a parrot in a cage. The woman on screen angled the video to its cage.

“Who’s a pretty boy, then?” said the parrot.

“Clarkey,” the woman’s voice came from behind the camera. “Listen carefully. My friend is going to play you a song.”

“Play-a-song, play-a-song,” Clarkey squawked.

The message began to play – hisssss .

Electric guitar chords.

WHUMP – twelfth second.

Clarkey bopped his head back and forth, largely unperturbed by the message.

“Clarkey?” the woman asked, “Do you like this song?”

“It’s terrible-terrible-terrible.”

A bearded man with spectacles looked into the lens and turned his device to the left.

Round two: A recording of a tank of exotic fish. A babbling brooks coughed out bubbles around the dozens of goldfish merrily swimming their way around.

“Okay, is that good?” asked the man.

“Yeah,” Tripp’s voice came from behind the lens, “Make sure the speaker is right up against the glass.”

“You got it.”

“Okay, in three, two, one…”

Hissssss … the message fired up.

“Nothing’s happening,” said the man, looking around the fish tank. “They’re just sort of swimming around.”

“Of course they’re swimming around,” Tripp snapped. “They’re fish. Be quiet a moment, and let me listen.”

The twelfth second struck – boom .

The sound wave hit the glass and sent a riptide across the water. The fish swam against the current, failing to react to the noise. They couldn’t have been less interested.

The man looked into the camera. “Tripp, did you get what you need?”

“Ugh, forget it.”

The third and final video.

A scurrying of dimly-lit boots traveled along a gravel path.

“I could get in serious trouble for this, you know,” a woman’s voice whispered above the frantic movement into the tiger enclosure.

“Thanks for doing this, Shannon,” Tripp’s voice came from behind the lens.

She lifted the camera. A tiger enclosure bleached into view.

“A zoo?” Maar looked up from the screen. “You’ve got too much time on your hands, Tripp.”

“You call process of elimination a waste of time?” Tripp asked, before realizing who he was dealing with. “Oh, of course. You’re just the money man, you’re not a scientist.”

“Don’t get insolent, Healy.”

Tripp ignored his superior’s remark and placed his index finger against his lips. “Shh. Watch.”

“Don’t shush me, Healy.”

“Look,” Tripp interjected, “If it didn’t work with a dog or a fish or a bird, then the last natural course of action was to try it with a bigger cat.”

“Oh, my,” Dimitri opened his mouth in wonder as the recording played out..

Shannon focused her lens on the sleeping tiger. “Tripp?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not going in. I’m setting the player down behind the cage. It’ll be plenty loud enough for her to hear it.”

“And it’s definitely a female?”

Shannon set the camera down on the stone ledge and focused the lens on the beast.

“Yes, this is Daisy. She’s relatively sedentary, as you can see. Perfectly harmless.”

“Okay, play the message when you’re ready.”

“Hang on,” Shannon reached into her belt and pulled out a tiny black device. She flicked the switch, enabling an array of blue lasers to shoot out and form an audio wave in thin air. “I can’t believe I’m doing this for you. I could lose my job.”

“You always were one for adventure,” Tripp joked.

She shot the lens a look of incredulity. “Oh, har-har. Remind me to wipe out all those dates we had before you joined NASA and ran off and married my sister.”

“Shh. Keep your voice down and play the track.”

Shannon giggled and hit the play button. “Okay, okay. Here we go.”

The waveform sprang to life, rifling through the lines of the hiss.

Daisy the tiger didn’t budge.

“Nothing’s happening.”

“I know,” Tripp said, “Give it five more seconds.”

Guitar chord…. Nine, ten, eleven, and…

Whump .

Daisy continued to sleep. No reaction whatsoever.

“Shannon?”

“Yes?”

“Can we wake her up? She might not be able to hear.”

“She’s alert, even when she’s asleep.”

The twentieth second rolled round, in time for the second boom .

Still nothing.

The audio wave’s visual bump representation slid off to the left and out of their lives forever.

The holovideo paused on Daisy the tiger.

The board members – and Dimitri and Maar – turned to Tripp for an explanation.

“So, this is the result. The message only gets a response from cats. Specifically, domesticated female house cats. We played the message to males and they didn’t respond.”

“Did you try any other lifeforms?” Maar asked.

“The investigation was, and still is, under embargo as per the Infinity Clause. Subsection twelve-point-eight, subsection three. If it wasn’t for that, I could have outsourced more—”

“—Okay, I’ve heard enough, Tripp.” Maar walked around the console and waved his hand across the image.

It rolled several thousand frames back to the start of the video, ending with a freeze-frame of Spooky’s confused face.

Maar cleared his throat, none-too-happy about the decision he was about to make. He addressed the board members.

“People of the board, USARIC finds itself in a rather invidious position. At once, we have a missing vessel with five of USARIC’s souls on board. Their whereabouts and state of wellbeing is unknown. We must presume they have expired. Dimitri?”