Touched by an Alien

chances are good you’re right. You want to suggest it or shall I?” he whispered.
    I thought about it. “Let me. If I’m wrong, you mop up,” I whispered back.
    He patted my shoulder. “I’m betting on genetics.”
    I cleared my throat and sat up straight. No time like the present to insult your hosts, after all. “I think your translation’s wrong.”

CHAPTER 26
    BEDLAM’S AN INTERESTING WORD . I would have said the superbeing sprouting killer wings caused bedlam. But that was before I’d shared my hunch with the A-C crew in the room.
    Every one of them, from White and Beverly all the way to Claudia and Lorraine, was talking, trying to speak over each other, countering my statement with a great deal of hyperbole.
    Dad patted my shoulder. “That’s my girl,” he said in my ear.
    I looked around, waiting for the crowd to calm down. Only two of them weren’t freaking out—Martini and Christopher. They were both looking at me, and they both looked curious but not upset.
    The room wasn’t quieting, and I wondered if it was because no one actually wanted to hear my theory. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.
    Christopher looked around, and I saw his eyes narrow. “Everyone, shut up,” he snarled. I wouldn’t have thought they could hear him, but to a person the mouths snapped closed. Nasty seemed to have its benefits. He looked at me. “Please explain what you mean.”
    I waited until they were all looking at me. “It’s not a textbook or a how to stop the invasion manual. It’s a religious text.”
    “Oh, come on,” Gower said with a laugh. “They came to warn us, Kitty. It’s a manual about the threat and how to protect ourselves from it.”
    I shook my head. “No. They came to convert us. They were missionaries. And that’s their version of the Bible.” I stood—it made me feel more like I could escape if they all jumped me. “It’s an understandable mistake. Your religion doesn’t think like theirs. But ours do.”
    I looked at Martini. “You don’t believe in Hell, right?” He nodded. “And you also believe in evolution, not a creation story, right?” Another nod. I saw other heads in the room nodding as well. “And a computer is only as good as what gets programmed into it. I’m sure no one, A-C or human, thought to include the Bible in the computer’s data banks for this. After all, this was a scientific threat, not a religious one.”
    I scrolled back to the first part of the text that had stopped me. “This talks about an explosion, a big bang. You interpreted it as a supernova—as the literal death of a star.” I looked over to Dad. “But I interpret this as the Ancients’ version of either the beginning of the universe or, more likely, the Garden of Eden.”
    He smiled at me. “An uneven algorithm creates challenges because you can get an algorithm that’s close, but not perfect. Just as they did here.” He pointed to the open book. “The problem with breaking a code is that you need to find the commonalities. Those are easier to identify the more text you have. But it’s a common mistake to go with the first translation that finally makes sense. You did a good job,” he added. “It’s just not perfect.”
    “I’m sure you could perfect it,” Beverly said, and her voice finally had a tone to it—deep sarcasm.
    “Probably,” Dad said with a shrug. “You’ve done the hard part. The next iterations would be the fine-tuning. That you didn’t do.”
    “We double-checked,” Beverly said hotly.
    “I’m sure you did. But you checked only against your original idea of what the book was.” Dad had his lecture mode on, I could tell. “In order to be completely accurate, you’d have to go in with no preconceived notions.”
    Mom must have picked up the likelihood of an impending lecture as well. “Sol, you want to let Kitty finish?”
    “Oh, sure.” Dad looked at me sheepishly. “Go ahead.”
    I scrolled to the text that had really stopped me. “I’m going to read this out loud, with some word substitutions. ‘They were stripped apart, and the souls were freed. These sailed through space, searching for Eden. But because of their evilness they could not find it and so began to search for another place to live.’ Sound familiar?”
    “Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise,” Reader said. “The fall of man.”
    “You could substitute Heaven for Eden, and Hell for another place to live. Same idea.” I looked around. “Our