You Can See Me?

Today was finally Tessy’s big day. Six centuries ago, hostilities erupted between the Earth and Eana. After an extraterrestrial message was translated and confirmed to be a declaration of war, the two planets worked quickly to build weapons for the conflict. Because Earth and Eana were over 12.4 million light years away, they had to think outside the box. Conventional weapons would be useless over such an insurmountable difference. Victory in the war would be determined by Helio-Nuclear-Powered Gravity Cannons or, Dum-Guns, that could harness the power of gravity, turning the invisible force into massive, planet-sized projectiles that could wipe out the enemy in one shot. Utilizing complex algorithms, the Dum-Guns could slingshot their projectiles toward the enemy by curving their shots along the gravity wells of planets, stars, and even black holes.

These shots were incredibly difficult to calculate and, because of the myriad light years between the weapon and its target, most of the shots were either intercepted or missed by a long shot. Even a successful shot (the closest to a hit had been 1.27 million miles away), took decades to reach their target. Desperate for a solution, the military turned to their greatest resource, the minds of the people! They introduced a program where everyday civilians could use their computers to “Mine for Ammunition”. By trying to decipher complex algorithms, everyday people like Tessy could use their gifts in math, physics, coding, or even luck to try and score the winning shot. Entry was free, but the line was long. Tessy’s parents signed her up for her turn before she was even born, but today was the day. After fourteen grueling years on the wait list, Tessy could finally take her shot at the enemy.

She spent the entire day at school sneaking peaks at live streams of the Dum-Gun firing off one shot after another. Every day the orbital weapon took thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pot shots into open space, each one programmed by a civilian miner who hoped to win the day for their planet. When one live stream got stale, she switched to the defense stream. Smaller Dum-Guns built in orbit that deflected enemy close calls. If a Dum shot hit its target, it would be the equivalent of Earth and Eana slamming into one another, lights out for the unlucky loser.

Tessy scrolled through videos of the defense Dum-Guns firing their shots. Truth be told, they weren't much to look at. Each shot was completely invisible and, of course, the guns made no sound when they fired. They didn’t even light up. The only evidence they were firing was the slight warping of space-time around the barrel of the Dum-Guns which lasted only a blink of an eye and the list of numbers scrolling by on the screen, calculating when the shot would hit, if it would hit, the likelihood of it being intercepted, and correction data for the next ammo miner. Even if Tessy scored the winning blow, nobody would know for another ten, twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years, but that didn’t matter to Tessy. She didn’t even know how the war started in the first place, heck, nobody did.

Tessy, like everyone else, was in it for the game. Even if she didn’t live to see it, knowing her shot would be the one was more than enough reward. With a happy squeal, Tessy buried her face in the hands of her sweater and kicked her feet. How did she know her shot would be the one? Because she took something into account that no other ammo miner had ever considered; a variable which she called her secret. With her entire childhood to prepare for this moment, Tessy studied and studied. She studied physics, coding, artillery from the ancient world, artillery from the modern world, math, history, science, and everything in between. She examined the distance between planets in her own galaxy, the distance between the known celestial bodies in the enemy’s galaxy, and any obstacles she might encounter in extra-galactic space.

Her research led her to discover her secret variable and it was her secret variable that would guarantee she would land her shot and win the war. Tessy realized, during her studies, that if she examined the original declaration of war, she could trace its flight path back to its origin point and simply input an algorithm to follow the declaration’s path back to its source. By not using the element of surprise, the enemy had left themselves wide open. That had been Tessy’s mission for the past six years. When her homework and chores were done, she would curl up in her bed, wrapped in a blanket, blasting beats to study to, and calculate her secret variable.

She told no one of her discovery, not even her parents. If her classmates found out, if anyone found out, they might use it before she could and claim credit for it. Each day that she watched the Dum-Gun livestream her heart stopped every time the machine fired and the same thought rushed through her head, “What if someone beat me to it? What if this is the shot that ends the war? What if I never get my chance?” Then, like clockwork, the AI would predict the shot would miss, Tessy would breath out, relaxing her back muscles, secure in the thought that only she could win the war. Rinse and repeat for six years.

When the bell rang at school, Tessy leapt up from her desk and rushed home, her firing time was 4:45, she had just over two hours to prepare and she didn’t want to waste a moment. Her friends didn’t ask her to join them at the pool, they learned quickly that school year that there would be no hanging out with Tessy until she had completed her mission. Many birthday parties, sleepovers, pool parties, and after school activities went by unattended while Tessy worked. There would be plenty of time to party once she had won the war.

On her way home, Tessy’s heart beat so fast and so high up in her chest that she ran the last three blocks. She flung her door open and ran past her mom and little brother. She grabbed a snack and, with a big smile, ran up the stairs, into her room, slammed the door behind her, and sat behind her computer. Her purple curtains were closed and the afternoon sun cast a purple haze through them onto Tessy’s messy bedroom. Clothes were strewn across the floor, she forgot to make her bed that morning. Three different cups of water sat on her nightstand, each one older than the last.

Her keyboard was strewn with crumbs, but in this moment this messy teenage girl’s bedroom was a command center. The pillar of the military, the launch floor from which the shot that saved the world would ring. As she booted up her computer, she wondered if they would turn her room into a museum in a hundred years, once she’d won the war. Maybe her great grandchildren would give tours of the house and talk about Tessy’s genius, her inspiration, her acute scientific mind.

The desktop hummed to life, its extra large fan kicking in, drowning out all the noise in the house. Last summer, in preparation for this very moment, Tessy and her dad built a new desktop. They picked every single piece and carefully assembled it over the course of one long soda-fueled night. Bouncing in her gaming chair, Tessy logged on to the ammo mining depot and watched the countdown clock. One hour, fifty eight minutes. She threw on her chunky headphones, blasted her favorite music and ran last minute diagnostics.

She spent the two hours carefully tracing the route of the declaration of war back to its source, a tiny little speck 1.27 million light years away. One summer, when a blast had come within 3.8 million miles, Tessy and her grandmother sat in the yard, trying to find that tiny speck with a telescope. It was too far away, but now Tessy knew exactly where her target was. The declaration had originated from a satellite launched over six hundred years ago, up until now, ammo miners tried to calculate their shots based on where the message transmitted from, but Tessy was busy figuring out where the satellite had come from.

Her final check was to send out a ping, a simulated radar bloop that used the algorithm to train the Dum-Gun’s sights. Over six hundred years, they had built up a pretty good picture of the other galaxy and were fairly confident that their virtual map was accurate. When the ammo mining system first launched, the army released their map to the public and Tessy was fast at work using it to trace her precise target. After six years, Tessy knew the enemy’s night sky better than her own. Her shot would bounce off her moon, fly past a star, circle a black hole three times to build up speed before zooming through open space.

After decades of uninterrupted travel, the gravity shot would loop around the enemy’s star and find its target. Tessy simulated the shot over and over again with the publicly available 3D map. Each time, a direct hit. As the timer counted down. Tessy took a long, deep breath. She trembled with excitement as she logged on, typed her algorithm, aimed her shot, double checked, triple checked, quadruple checked, and quintuple checked her math. When her heart reached her throat and felt like it would jump out onto the keyboard, she pressed enter. Without so much as a beep, her shot was fired and the next person in the queue stepped up for their turn.

Tessy sat and watched her screen for a moment. It was done. Six years of work were finished. Once her heart calmed down she would check her math one last time and then she would live her life. In a few days, maybe a few months, or even a few years they would announce that her shot was on target and, in a century, the war would be over. Tessy took off her headphones. What she thought was the beat of drums was really her heart beat. She loaded up the 3D map and pinged her target again. Just like always, it was dead on.

As she reached for the off button on her computer, a thought struck her. They had pinged and mapped out the enemy’s galaxy with their Dum-Gun shots, who was to say the enemy wasn’t doing the same thing? Then another thought struck Tessy, had her planet ever sent a message back to the enemy? What if each radar ping was giving away their location? Startled at the thought, but sure it was nothing, Tessy loaded up the map again. This time, she traced her shot in reverse. If they copied her shot, they would miss by a few million miles… but if they adjusted… if they had a map of her galaxy…

Going into the public database, Tessy looked up if they had ever sent a message to the enemy. Her heart stopped when she saw that, five hundred thirty three years ago, they responded to the enemy’s declaration with a declaration of their own. Tessy felt like she might vomit. The enemy had everything they needed to destroy Tessy’s planet. Had just happened upon the solution before they did? Was it luck? The enemy still had a hundred or so years to fire back.

Quickly, Tessy opened up the data from the enemy’s shots and tried to calculate how close they were getting. Her eyes grew wide as the number flashed across her screen. Just like them, each of the enemy’s shots was inching closer and closer to her planet. Their next shot, if it followed her secret variable, would be a direct hit. Tessy threw up a little bit in her mouth as another thought crept into her head.

Just as she had used the enemy’s Dum-Gun shots to calculate her’s, they were using her Dum-Gun shots to calculate their’s. She had just given the enemy the means to destroy her planet. Her shot would hit, that was guaranteed, but she had just painted a target on her planet’s back. Shaking with a cold sweat, Tessy stared at her computer until the sun went down. When the stars covered the sky, she staggered out to her yard, ignoring her parent’s questions about how it went.

Paler than snow, Tessy looked up at the sky, one of those twinkling lights was death from above. Tessy fell to her knees knowing she would live the rest of her life in peace, knowing that her children, and maybe her grandchildren would too. But she knew that somewhere, hundreds of years down the line, she had signed the death warrant for her entire world.

Tessy searched the sky for Earth and, when she found the small blinking light, in a trembling whisper, with hot tears running down her cheeks, Tessy pointed a trembling finger and muttered what was not quite a question, nor accusation, just a muted, fearful realization,

“You can see me?”