Chapter 2: The Quickening

“Captain, there it is again!” the Operations Officer called out. “Energy spike, bearing 350 by 30, range 1200 miles!”

Fleet Captain Abbazia strode over to the operations console and looked down at it over the operations officer’s shoulder. “Analysis. Is it a weapon? Are we being fired upon?”

The Operations Officer turned some dials and flipped some switches while staring intently at his display monitor. “Negative, sir. Energy source is stationary. The source appears to be somewhere on a landmass at that location.”

Fleet Captain Abbazia thrust a finger toward another of the bridge crew. “Information Officer! What do we know about that place? Is it a hotbed of subversive activity?”

The Information Officer frantically turned some dials and flipped some switches, encoding her data request into the ship’s electric brain. She drummed her fingers as she waited for it to process, then read the resulting report on her view screen. “Negative, sir! That island is classified X dash 17, abandoned and uninhabited.”

“Abandoned?” Abbazia wondered aloud.

“Affirmative, sir. The last mention of it in our databanks indicates the population was involuntarily reduced to negligible status 48 years ago.”

“Purged, hmm? Well, that doesn’t explain this phantom energy spike. Could it be a natural phenomenon?”

“Sir!” interjected the Operation Officer. “I compared this spike to the one we detected previously. It’s really weird.”

“Elaborate, Lieutenant.”

“Well,” the Operations Officer began, “I was curious as to the source of this energy, so I plotted it as a function of time. Then, I retrieved the data from the previous spike and did the same thing. Looking at the two of them side by side, I noticed an unusual relationship between them.”

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I wanted you to elaborate on your conclusions.”

“Oh,” said the Operations Officer, abashed. “Yes, sir.”

After a few seconds of contemplative quiet, Abbazia said, “Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir?”

Abbazia shouted, “What did you discover?”

The Operations Officer jumped in his seat. “Oh! Right. Sorry, sir. The two energy spikes appear to have exactly the same amplitude, but precisely opposite wave forms.”

“I see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And why is that important?” Abbazia asked through gritted teeth.

“Well, if the source of the energy were some sort of natural activity, as you had previously suggested – very clever of you, by the way, sir – then I would expect the second one to be slightly weaker than the first, and for the wave form to be roughly identical. This is different. It’s like something happened, and then later something else happened to reverse it.”

“So that means it is artificial?” asked Abbazia.

“Most likely, sir,” the Operations Officer agreed, nodding. “Very astute of you. Either that or something very unusual is happening, which would be of interest to the Ministry of Science.”

“Right,” said Abbazia, never one to miss an opportunity to suck up to higher management. “Send down a troop of scouts to look into it.” Abbazia reclaimed his uniform coat from the back of his captain’s chair, slipped it over his shoulders, and started buttoning it up. Smoothing back his wavy black hair with his hand, he added, “I’ll go alert Her Ladyship that we will be slightly delayed.”