Touched by an Alien

tell—I’d lived with him the majority of my life, after all. The big lies, sure, both parents had done those well, but they’d had them in place before I showed up. But the little lies, not so much. Dad, in particular, had a lot of clues when he wasn’t telling the truth. I knew there was more to why he wanted to see the text than curiosity. But I wanted to see it, too.
    White shrugged and Gower left the room, presumably to go order up the actual volume. While we waited, I kept on scrolling through. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I just had a feeling there was something no one was picking up.
    I reached the part about a sun dying, and I slowed down. The description was sad, really. A well-inhabited planetary system had circled a star that went supernova with almost no warning. One day, everything was normal. The next, the star exploded. In a big bang.
    I backed up. It literally said it—“big bang.” There was text in parentheses after this saying “supernova.”
    “How do I mark something I want to come back to?” I asked Lorraine.
    She reached over to the mouse and pushed something. The paragraph I was reading was now backlit in yellow.
    “Nice, thanks. The words in parens, what are they?”
    “Areas where the translation team wasn’t sure of the accuracy,” Claudia replied. “The information in the parentheses is the most likely guess.”
    “Okay.” I kept on reading. The Ancients were describing what happened to the people on the planets.
    “They were stripped apart, and the portion that could live without the body (aka: parasite) was freed. These sailed through space, searching for their new home. But because of their innate being (best guess) they could not find it and so began to search for new hosts.”
    “Highlight this, please,” I asked Lorraine. “Dad, I want you to find the passage that corresponds to this in the original.”
    “You got it, kitten.” He sounded as if he knew where I was headed. I hoped so, because I wasn’t sure of my direction yet.
    I kept scrolling. Many references to the big bang, to the portions that could live without the body—now only called parasites for ease of reading—searching for a place they couldn’t find. Descriptions of horrors to come when the parasites found their new hosts. Details of why to avoid the parasites—death, destruction, horror—no details on how to live with them. Several references to the pain the parasites caused when they joined with a new host.
    The book shifted, and now it was talking about the Ancients, how they had avoided the parasites, and how they wanted to ensure all the other planets would as well. They gave detailed instructions on how to keep the parasites away. Planetary protections were listed side by side with what sounded like the standard clean-living plan—be a good person, don’t do bad things, don’t get angry. Lots and lots of don’t get angry and similar advice. Keep your cool, that was the Ancients’ watchword for this section.
    “Who did the translations? I know you said it took a supercomputer. Did any humans have involvement?”
    “Some,” White replied. “Most were our people, though humans created the computer program.”
    Gower and several women came in, including Beverly, the one with the boring speaking voice. The women were there, it was clear, to protect the original text, because they weren’t allowing Gower to touch it. The situation and my request were explained.
    Beverly appeared to be in charge, at least of the book. She moved it in front of me and Dad and reverently opened the pages. She turned carefully to the part I’d asked for. It was very near the start of the book.
    Dad didn’t try to touch it, he just leaned over my shoulder to stare. “It’s all columns and rows, like a spreadsheet. Did you read it right to left, left to right, up to down or down to up?”
    “We tried all of them,” Beverly replied. She was still monotonal, and I was glad I felt reasonably rested.
    “Which one worked?” Dad sounded as if he were vibrating behind me.
    “None of them. It was an algorithm.” Beverly sounded annoyed.
    “Even or uneven?” Dad leaned on me now, trying to get as close to the text as he could.
    “Uneven,” Beverly admitted. “It was very odd. We had to run a huge number of variations through the computer to come up with anything coherent.”
    Dad stopped leaning on me. “Thought so.” He bent down now. “If you’re going where I think you are,