Bluey (1)

Eight years seems so long ago. It’s unbelievable how much the world has changed.   

 

Back then, everyone assumed we were alone in the universe. Nobody even noticed the existence of Bluey; it was just planet 542963 then, deemed unworthy of a name.      

 

At the time I was a newly married student and Josh was struggling to make headway in his astrophysics career, a junior researcher in an observatory, earning slightly less than the bagel chef.

 

Then, suddenly, the universe as we knew it was turned on its head. And it all started, of all places, in my bedroom.

 

“I’ve discovered a new form of pulsar,” Josh said to me in bed one night. We used to sit up in bed chatting before we went to sleep. Often it was the only time we had to talk all day, when Josh got home he’d usually find me lost in the computer screen and he always woke up at least an hour before I did.

 

“A new pulsar, what does that mean?” I replied.   Though I was studying biology I was pretty ignorant about other areas of science.  

 

“It’s a neutron star, a compressed star.  What we pick up as radio waves is the radiation it releases as it rotates.”

 

“So what’s new about your pulsar?”

 

“All known pulsars repeat the same sequence, there’s a pattern.  This one’s erratic, with different sequences and gaps between the radio waves. I think it must be the result of a collision between two stars, what we’re picking up is a mix of two pulsars, like a DJ sampling different songs.  If I can just differentiate the two distinct sets of waves it’ll be a ground-breaking piece of work, I‘ll be whizzing up the career ladder.”

 

“Destination stratosphere,” I replied. 

 

The next day Josh took me out to dinner to celebrate his discovery.  It wasn’t until we were sitting down that I realised how posh the restaurant was.  

 

“We can’t afford this,” I whispered, in social terror.  I was still a student and although Josh was working he was on a low grade, a meal in a place like this would mean we wouldn’t be able to afford a social life for at least a year.  

 

“It wasn’t a pulsar,” was all Josh said in answer.  It took me a while to remember what he was referring to. When you’re young yesterday seems such a long time ago.

 

“Then what was it?”

 

“Get ready to see my face on every news channel in the country.”

 

“Why, which celebrity have you been sleeping with?”

 

“Any one I choose after tomorrow, I’m going to be an A-lister myself.  I’ve discovered alien life.”

 

“Alien life?”

 

“That pulsar. It’s not a pulsar at all, the emissions were too erratic.  I went through the data again. It’s a radio signal.”

 

“Radio? You mean they’re sending messages to us?”

 

“No, I don’t think so, just to each other, but their signals are reaching us. It’s proof that the planet has life. Intelligent life, not just some bacteria or crawling swamp-creatures, but beings capable of developing sophisticated technology. This is going to make my fortune, we’ll be eating like this every night.”

 

“That’s extraordinary,” I said, still chewing over the implication of his words. “Aliens.”

 

“That’s not the extraordinary thing.  What’s incredible is that they’re only eleven light years away.  In interstellar terms they’re our neighbours. We could reach there.  They could reach us. We’re no longer alone.”

 

It was the most staggering revelation I’d heard in my life, and remained so until the bill arrived.

 

It actually took nine months before Josh reached the front page of every newspaper. The extraordinary nature of his claims meant that his paper was checked, double checked and checked again before any journal would publish it.  It also took a few months before he got a pay rise, the observatory bosses reluctant to acknowledge the extraordinary truth of his findings.

 

So I was right, we did suffer three months of absolute, dire poverty as a result of that bloody meal.  We literally had no money, not just a cancelled social life, but even food became implausible. I’ve never been so poor, though I refused to borrow, besides what could I tell my bank? “My boyfriend’s discovered aliens, could I have some money, so that I can eat in phenomenally expensive restaurants?”

 

The nine months before publication were torture for Josh in so many ways. He wasn’t able to discuss his findings outside of the tightly-controlled university environment, we couldn‘t even mention it in front of the cat (never trust a cat - what was it doing in the house anyway, it wasn‘t ours). 

 

As soon as his article hit the press, though, Josh became the overnight sensation he’d predicted, and I suspect always wanted.  I hardly saw him for the next few months, all he did was talk about his findings on the TV news and science programmes.  It was a bigger story than that guy who discovered the cure for cancer - see, I can’t even remember his name.   

 

Josh’s picture was on every newspaper, every TV channel.

 

If Josh thought it would remain his planet forever though, he was romantically mistaken.  Soon every scientist had something to contribute and the TV was wall to wall professors of everything from astrophysics to theology, debating the political, philosophical and moral implications of interstellar life.

 

As Josh’s TV appearances died off I was pleased, as it meant I got see my husband again. At least, I was pleased at first, but having tasted fame he missed it. Missed it more than he’d missed his wife. He’d get home from work, switch the TV on and slump in front of the screen, daring the people on the programme to be less entertaining than he was.

 

My words hit a wall whenever I spoke to him. When he did speak it was to swear and shout at the TV.  “This is basic stuff? I could do a better job than this twonk. Why didn’t they get me on the programme? It’s my fucking planet after all.”    

 

I tried to josh him out of it, but there was no joshing Josh. He’d just turn his fury on me. I was just as alone with him there, than I was when I lost him to fame. More alone – I couldn’t switch on the TV and watch him beaming back at me.

 

And then Mike Katz came along.

 

Mike Katz was another scientist, the son of Professor Michael Katz, owner of Big Science Journal.  It was Big Science that published the article (“I bet he didn’t have a nine month wait for his article to get published,” Josh would moan several times a night). Mike discovered that the surface of planet 542963 was mostly comprised of water. In other words it was a planet like our own, with wide, rolling oceans of water.

 

Within hours the media had christened the planet Bluey.

 

“Bluey! How the hell can they name it after Katz? I discovered the signal. I found life. It should be me they named it after, not that newsboy’s son.”

 

“They didn’t name it after him. Besides, you can hardly call a planet Josh. That’s just silly.”
“Well, they could have called it after my discovery. Signal – that’s a great name for a planet. Or Rad Wave.”

 

“Or Beepy.”

 

“Don’t try and be funny. That’s my life’s work you’re mocking. My greatest discovery. And I’ve been surpassed by a puddle. I discovered life! Intelligent life, I proved that we’re not alone – I trumped the work of every scientist and philosopher that came before me. And I get kicked aside for that Katz. For what? Finding water. Honestly, Katz’s discovery would be handy in a desert, but it’s nothing in science.”

 

It wasn’t nothing, obviously. Suddenly discovering that the planet was like ours, deep blue, oceanic, made it more real. It was our first connection with the aliens, it gave us something in common, even if we knew nothing else about them. ‘

  

“It’s that bloody Katz again,” was seemingly all Josh said to me for weeks on end.

 

And then came the next big discovery. This time it wasn’t made by Mike Katz, or one of the feted big-name-scientists Josh had begun to hate. It was made by my father.  Talk about keeping it in the family.

 

Dad was one of a team of linguists working on translating the radio signals.  He speaks every language there is, including the long-abandoned languages of our ancestors.  “I prefer dead languages,” he always jokes, “there’s no-one around to correct your pronunciation.”

 

I’d gone round there to help him with his plants. Dad’s an inconsistent gardener, he loves to grow a crazy diversity of flowers, so that year-round there’s colour and splendour in some corner of his backyard, but he has very little understanding of their needs. I’m frequently called upon to use my botanical skills to rescue his latest victim and “Make sure that next month’s display isn’t cancelled.”

 

“Come into my patio,” he said to me when I’d finished. “I have something I need to tell you. Wine?”

 

Wine was typical of dad’s passions. Wine was one of the ancients’ drinks, which scientists in his university had learnt to reproduce, a pleasant alcoholic beverage made from grapes.  The drink that “proves our ancestors were onto a good thing“, as he always says. 

 

“I shouldn’t be drinking this. It makes me feel giggly and funny.”

 

“That’s the point of it. Our ancient’s weren’t stupid, they understood the importance of feeling giggly.”

 

It’s impossible to imagine a sterner advocate of giggliness than my father.

 

We sat down and looked out at the garden, mostly green, but patterned with random patches of blue, gold and orange. I was lost in contemplation of the garden when I realised that dad was talking to me.

 

“It’s one of the ancient languages,” I heard him say.

 

“What is?”

 

“English,” he said.

 

I was puzzled. Most people had never heard of English, but I’d grown up with it, it was one of my father’s specialist subjects, once of his obsessions, one of the lost languages last spoken by our ancestors something like 100,000 years ago. 

 

It was spoken by the Engos, one of the lost peoples.

 

“What about English?” I asked.

 

“Honestly dear, don’t you listen to a word the old man says any more?  I’ve just told you is the single most important thing I’ve ever said to anyone in my entire life, and you weren’t even listening. I’d be better off talking to my plants.”
“You do talk to your plants. Anyway, don’t change the subject, what is this ‘most important thing you’ve ever said’?”

 

“It’s English.”

 

“What’s English?”

 

“Oh honestly dear, pay attention. The language. The radio waves.”

 

It took a while for this to sink in.

 

“You mean …? What do you mean, exactly?
“I mean I read the transmission of the radio waves, the alien language we were supposed to find a way to translate. I recognised it straight away. Everyone else hates me, of course.”

 

“What does it mean?”

 

“It means that my book ‘Understanding the Engos’ will get a second print run. It might even make the best seller list.”

 

“But how can aliens on another planet be speaking one of our lost languages?”

 

There was a long pause, as my father constructed his answer.

 

“Well, either the Engos were far more advanced than we thought and some of the Engos were able to travel there and colonise the planet, or …”

 

“Or?”

 

“Or their ancestors travelled here. Either we’re descended from emigrants from Bluey, or they’re descended from the Engos.”

 

There were no words available to me. What can you say. It’s like finding out you’ve a brother you never knew about. Only not just the one sibling, but an entire planet full of them.

 

I sat there for a long time, in silence, drinking wine and staring at the flowers in the garden.