Earth: Starting Notes
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 4: First Contact
Daniel woke at five twelve because somebody had decided history should happen on a Tuesday.
He lay still.
The room was dark except for the thin winter light beginning around the curtains.
For several seconds he did not know what had woken him.
Then he remembered.
Today.
Maybe.
If relay geometry held.
He looked at the empty side of the bed.
That had become a habit too.
Not the looking.
The distinction.
There had been a time after Emily when the empty side had meant absence with no direction attached to it. Nothing coming. Nothing expected.
Now emptiness could contain movement.
Neris was alive.
Neris was going home.
Neris intended to come back.
Somewhere aboard a science vessel, ER was apparently walking around in an orange safety vest because the universe had no remaining standards.
Daniel got out of bed.
The maple transceiver sat downstairs on the kitchen table.
He did not check it immediately.
That was deliberate.
He made coffee first.
Then toast.
Then stood in front of the sink and did the exercises Mara had given him while the coffee brewed.
His left side pulled unpleasantly through the fourth repetition.
He did the fifth anyway.
Not the sixth.
Compromise.
He poured coffee.
Then looked at the transceiver.
The display had changed overnight.
NEXT PROBABLE PERSONAL RELAY WINDOW: 08:21–11:06
Daniel frowned.
Yesterday the range had been almost nineteen hours wide.
Now less than three.
Below that:
NETWORK CONFIDENCE: 91%
He touched the maple casing.
“Showing off.”
The box did not reply.
That was still one of its better qualities.
Outside, something metallic clanged.
Daniel looked toward the mudroom.
Marcel entered seven seconds later without knocking.
Daniel stared.
“You know doors have a ritual.”
Marcel removed his hat.
“I knocked.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I knocked at home.”
“That isn’t how it works.”
Marcel went to the coffee pot.
Daniel pointed.
“You’re here early.”
“No.”
“It’s five thirty.”
“Cows don’t care.”
“The cows are asleep.”
“They’re cows.”
Daniel watched Marcel pour coffee.
“You came because Canada gets contacted today.”
Marcel drank.
“No.”
“Feed?”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked through the window.
Dark yard.
Untouched feed equipment.
“Right.”
Marcel looked at the transceiver.
“Anything?”
“Better window prediction.”
“Means?”
“Means apparently somebody over there has been improving things.”
“Box got better.”
Daniel smiled.
“That’s what I said.”
“You talked to it?”
“No.”
Marcel looked unconvinced.
Daniel sat.
“The hardware didn’t change.”
“Messages faster?”
“Looks like.”
“Better box.”
“ER would hate you.”
“Good.”
Daniel drank coffee.
The farmhouse stayed quiet.
No helicopters.
No federal motorcade.
No news vans.
No aliens.
Just two men drinking coffee while another civilization prepared to introduce itself to their government.
Marcel scratched his beard.
“What happens?”
“Message goes to Ottawa.”
“Then?”
“They verify it.”
“How?”
Daniel shrugged.
“Apparently there’s an authentication package.”
“What’s in that?”
“No idea.”
“Alien password?”
“Probably not.”
“Could be.”
“ER would use something annoying.”
“Like what?”
Daniel thought.
“CorrectHorseBatteryPun.”
Marcel looked at him.
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
Marcel nodded solemnly.
“Good thing he left.”
Daniel laughed.
Then looked toward the transceiver again.
Today might get strange.
Neris had warned him.
He had answered.
We’ll manage.
That had sounded easier when nobody from the federal government had his name yet.
On Aster Vale, ER was arguing about bandwidth.
He did it while seated.
Neris found that more distracting than the argument.
The orange maintenance platform sat facing the wall display where Senior Contact Assessor Ivara Sen appeared remotely, both mechanical hands folded neatly in front of it.
The safety vest remained.
ER had removed neither vest nor reflective strips.
Neris had stopped asking.
For now.
A communications systems specialist occupied another seat, though Neris had forgotten his name twice because the presentation behind him contained enough numbers to make names irrelevant.
The heading read:
EARTH RELAY CAPABILITY — OPERATIONAL REVISION 6
ER pointed at one line.
“You are reserving thirty-two percent of projected window capacity for diplomatic traffic.”
“Yes,” the specialist said.
“And twenty-four percent for authentication and retransmission.”
“Yes.”
“That leaves inadequate household capacity.”
On the wall display, Ivara looked at him.
“Household traffic is not the primary purpose of the relay.”
“That is a matter of perspective.”
Neris rested her chin on one paw.
“ER.”
“I am correct.”
“You have thirty-seven percent more personal bandwidth than three days ago.”
“Forty-two under ideal geometry.”
“Then stop fighting.”
“I am negotiating.”
Ivara said:
“You have been negotiating for eighteen minutes.”
“Successfully.”
The specialist sighed.
Neris looked at the wall display.
She understood enough now to know that the maple transceiver had not changed.
Daniel’s little wooden box was still exactly what she and ER had built it to be: a tiny authenticated endpoint designed to receive short messages across a path that had barely existed.
What had changed was everything behind it.
Aster Vale had been feeding Veyra new phase measurements almost continuously.
Ministry arrays had been assigned to Earth traffic.
Predictive models were being rebuilt after every window.
Error correction had improved.
The far-side relay was now reserving part of its capacity specifically for Earth.
Instead of waiting for a communication path to happen, Xianglume had begun leaning on the edges of it.
Carefully.
Not forcing the corridor open.
Finding where it already wanted to be.
The result was still intermittent.
Still frustrating.
But what had once been:
maybe in two days
was becoming:
probably this afternoon
On ordinary Coalition routes, that would have been laughably inadequate.
A courier travelling between established worlds did not wait days for a phase geometry to become convenient. The route already knew where it was. Navigation markers and stabilization arrays made the useful geometry predictable enough that nobody built family life around a countdown timer.
Earth was different.
The accident had carried Takuhai beyond the Coalition’s mature route network, to an endpoint nobody had marked and nobody had expected to need. Every Earth-facing array now added another reference. Every successful window gave the models another measurement. Every Earthside receiver that could answer precisely made the far endpoint a little less hypothetical.
The result was not continuous communication.
It was infrastructure beginning to teach an impossible route how to behave.
Neris looked at the next forecast.
Two projected Earth-facing windows today.
The first broad enough for the Canadian contact package.
The second, five hours later, expected to be shorter but cleaner.
Ivara said:
“The Canadian government packet does not route through Mercer’s transceiver.”
Neris nodded.
She knew.
The Ministry had repeated it several times.
Daniel was not a communications hub.
His kitchen was not an embassy.
The first-contact team had built a separate targeted Earthside delivery process.
Three Canadian federal systems would receive the initial packet independently.
Redundant recipients.
Redundant routes.
Same authenticated content.
No single office could quietly decide the message did not exist.
No single compromised system could control the initial interpretation.
Neris looked at the destination list.
A Global Affairs secure communications channel.
A federal science-policy endpoint.
A defence communications system.
“Are we certain they won’t interpret simultaneous penetration of secure networks as an attack?” she asked.
The specialist said:
“The initial transfer does not alter the systems.”
“They will still call it intrusion.”
“Yes.”
Ivara folded her wings.
“Which is why the first paragraph apologizes.”
ER turned his sensor head.
“I remain unconvinced that apologizing for accessing three protected networks makes accessing three protected networks substantially less alarming.”
“You proposed four.”
“For redundancy.”
Neris smiled.
Ivara said:
“We are sending the minimum necessary data.”
“Minimum is relative.”
“The Ministry has done this before.”
ER looked at her.
“And sometimes badly.”
“Yes.”
Neris watched Ivara on the display.
The answer still mattered.
No defensive pride.
No insistence that Xianglume knew best.
They had history.
Not perfection.
Ivara brought the final contact packet onto the wall.
No flourish.
No seal.
No animated image of Xianglume.
Text first.
Authentication material second.
Technical appendix third.
Neris read the opening.
TO THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
Her tail tightened around the chair leg.
Below:
This communication originates from the Ministry for Interplanetary Affairs of Xianglume. We are contacting you concerning an accidental encounter between citizens of Xianglume and residents of Canada beginning in October of your current calendar year.
Neris read on.
No hostile intent.
No territorial claim.
No request for exclusive diplomatic status.
Confirmation of Neris Vael.
Confirmation of ER, citizen AI and resident intelligence of courier vessel Takuhai.
Confirmation that Takuhai had been present on Canadian soil.
Confirmation that one human, Daniel Mercer, had received emergency Xianglume medical intervention.
The next lines were more specific.
Daniel Mercer remains an autonomous participant in this contact. Xianglume claims no custodial, medical, legal, biological or technological ownership over him.
Neris’s ears lifted.
Ivara noticed.
“Final Legal wording.”
“Better.”
The next section:
Xianglume does not recommend quarantine, confinement or involuntary medical isolation on the basis of current evidence.
Any medical, scientific or technical cooperation concerning Mr. Mercer will require his informed consent.
His exact location is withheld at his request pending establishment of a controlled contact mechanism.
Daniel.
A paragraph.
A rights clause.
A withheld location.
To the people receiving this, he would initially be data.
Neris hated that.
She also understood why.
Ivara said quietly:
“He will become a person to them.”
Neris looked at her.
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because we will insist they meet him as one.”
ER’s platform leaned back slightly.
The movement was unnecessary.
Neris noticed that too.
He was beginning to collect gestures.
Ivara continued.
“The transmission window opens in twelve minutes.”
The room changed.
Nobody moved faster.
That was the strange thing.
Years of protocol had apparently taught first-contact officials that the correct response to history was administrative calm.
Neris stood.
“I’m going to Takuhai.”
Ivara nodded.
“You don’t need to be here for transmission.”
“I know.”
ER stood too.
The orange vest crinkled.
Neris looked at him.
“You’re coming?”
“I am already there.”
She stopped.
ER’s sensor head turned toward her.
Neris smiled.
“Still getting used to that.”
“So am I.”
They left together.
The first person in Canada to see the message thought it was malware.
That was reasonable.
Marc Beaulieu was halfway through a briefing note on Arctic infrastructure coordination when the secure communications terminal on the other side of his office flagged an unscheduled priority packet.
Not email.
Not ordinary classified traffic.
Not anything that should have arrived without routing metadata.
He stared.
The header appeared in English and French.
AUTHENTICATED EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Below it:
ORIGIN CLAIM: XIANGLUME
He frowned.
Read again.
Xianglume.
One word.
Unknown origin.
Unknown routing.
He did not open the attachment.
He called security.
Within ninety seconds, the terminal was isolated.
Within three minutes, somebody from cyber response was asking whether he had clicked anything.
Within five, a second notification arrived from another building.
Federal science-policy network.
Same header.
Same checksum.
Marc stopped assuming somebody had targeted him personally.
At seven minutes, a defence liaison reported receiving an equivalent packet through a physically separate communications system.
That was worse.
Or better.
Nobody knew.
Marc stood in a secure conference room forty-one minutes later with two people he had met before and six he had not.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw sat nearest the primary display.
Late fifties.
Grey hair cut short.
A habit of reading entire pages before speaking.
Beside her, Colonel Sarah McKenna had already filled half a notebook.
Marc disliked people who took notes on paper during cyber incidents.
He also trusted them more than people who did not take notes at all.
A cyber-security specialist finished explaining the impossible part.
“The three packets are not identical at the transport layer.”
Marc said:
“In English.”
“They arrived through different systems.”
“I gathered that.”
“But the internal payloads are cryptographically linked.”
Evelyn looked up.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning either the sender compromised three federal systems independently and coordinated delivery to within nineteen seconds, or—”
“Or?”
The specialist hesitated.
“Or they did what the packet claims.”
McKenna said:
“Do not finish that sentence yet.”
Marc looked at the wall.
The message had been rendered into an isolated environment.
No active code.
No executable payload.
Text.
Images.
Authentication material.
One set of coordinates.
One timestamp.
One astronomical signature.
And a name.
Daniel Mercer.
Evelyn said:
“What can we verify without accepting the premise?”
The cyber specialist answered first.
“The arrival method.”
“Do that.”
“Already in progress.”
“Next.”
A defence analyst said:
“The packet references an anomalous atmospheric and electromagnetic event over northern Ontario on December seventeenth.”
McKenna looked up.
“Public?”
“No.”
“Classified?”
“Restricted operational report.”
Marc’s attention sharpened.
“What event?”
The analyst opened a file.
Several radar anomalies.
Unresolved upper-atmosphere signature.
Brief sensor loss.
No aircraft identified.
No public safety event.
No interception because whatever had happened was already gone by the time the data reached human attention.
Evelyn looked at the contact packet.
“Could the sender have obtained this through a cyber intrusion?”
“Yes.”
McKenna said:
“Then it proves access, not extraterrestrials.”
“Correct.”
Marc nodded.
“Good. Keep proving less.”
Evelyn looked at him.
He shrugged.
“Extraordinary claims. Let’s not get emotionally attached.”
Nobody laughed.
He had not expected them to.
The packet contained an authentication proposal.
Canada could generate a challenge.
Random.
Unpredictable.
Route it through a designated terrestrial endpoint included in the message.
The sender claimed the next usable Earth-facing relay window would begin in approximately four hours and forty minutes.
Evelyn read that twice.
“They’re telling us when they can answer.”
“Apparently.”
McKenna said:
“Or when they plan to trigger whatever this operation is.”
Marc looked at her.
“Your job is depressing.”
“Yes.”
Evelyn said:
“Prepare the challenge.”
The cyber specialist hesitated.
“You want to reply?”
Marc looked at the clock.
“We have four hours.”
McKenna said:
“We have less if this is real.”
Everybody looked at her.
She closed the notebook.
“If this is fake, we have a sophisticated hostile intrusion.”
A pause.
“If it’s real, we have four hours before the aliens call back.”
Marc rubbed both hands over his face.
Nobody had written a briefing template for that sentence.
The maple transceiver chimed at nine twenty-six.
Daniel was in the barn.
Again.
Marcel heard it through the open mudroom door.
Daniel did not.
Marcel stepped outside.
“Daniel.”
Daniel looked up from the feed cart.
“What?”
“Box.”
Daniel stared.
“Of course.”
He walked toward the house.
Marcel followed.
“I’m starting to think you’re right.”
“About?”
“It waits until you leave.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t agreement.”
They entered the kitchen.
The display read:
PRIORITY STATUS
Daniel opened it.
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT CONTACT INITIATED
His stomach dropped even though he had expected the sentence.
Below:
YOUR EXACT LOCATION REMAINS RESTRICTED
NO EARTH AUTHORITY HAS BEEN GIVEN DIRECT ACCESS TO YOU
CURRENT STATUS: INITIAL AUTHENTICATION
Daniel read the first line again.
Marcel looked over his shoulder.
“Well.”
Daniel kept reading.
Marcel waited.
“Government well?”
Daniel nodded.
“Government well.”
Marcel pulled out a chair.
Daniel sat.
The farm stayed exactly where it was.
He could hear cattle.
The furnace.
The refrigerator.
A truck somewhere on the road.
Canada knew.
Not everyone in Canada.
Not even remotely.
But somewhere inside the government, a human being had opened a message that said Xianglume existed.
Daniel pictured the scene.
He failed.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Marcel asked.
“Assuming it’s fake.”
“Good.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Good?”
“Would worry me if they believed it right away.”
Daniel considered.
“Fair.”
The transceiver updated.
A second line appeared.
PERSONAL RELAY NETWORK IMPROVEMENTS ACTIVE
NEXT PROBABLE WINDOW: 06:14–08:02
Daniel frowned.
Marcel saw.
“Better box.”
Daniel pointed at the screen.
“Network.”
“Messages faster.”
“Network.”
“Box better.”
Daniel opened a text field.
ER had explained the architecture in Neris’s last technical note.
Aster Vale.
Veyra.
Ministry relay capacity.
Prediction models.
Nothing had changed in the maple housing.
Daniel typed into the personal queue:
Tell ER the box got better.
Then stopped.
Deleted it.
He needed those characters for things that mattered.
Probably.
He looked at Marcel.
“Six hours.”
“Until?”
“Next personal window.”
“Used to be two days.”
“Yeah.”
Marcel nodded toward the transceiver.
“Better box.”
Daniel gave up.
Neris found ER standing beneath Takuhai’s damaged aft hull.
Not figuratively.
Standing.
The maintenance platform’s head was tilted upward while two technicians worked above him.
He had both hands behind his back.
Neris stopped at the edge of the bay.
“You look supervisory.”
“I am observing.”
“You look like Ormaz when someone repairs plumbing.”
“I have never observed your father supervising plumbing.”
“You will.”
ER turned.
The vest reflected bay lights.
Neris walked over.
“Contact sent?”
“Yes.”
“Delivered?”
“To all three target systems.”
Neris exhaled.
“Response?”
“Not yet.”
“How long?”
“Current window closed eleven minutes ago.”
She looked up.
“So even if they reply now—”
“We cannot receive it until the next Earth-facing geometry.”
“Five hours.”
“Approximately.”
Neris rubbed one ear.
“That feels cruel.”
“It is an improvement.”
“I know.”
ER looked at Takuhai.
“Three days ago, we might have waited forty-eight hours.”
“Still cruel.”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
That was new too.
ER admitting emotional descriptions without correcting them.
Neris walked closer to the ship.
The resonator compartment was empty now.
Cleaned.
Measured.
Waiting for replacement structures.
“They say anything about the new lattice?”
“Design compatibility review continues.”
“Meaning?”
“They dislike several decisions we made on Earth.”
“Which ones?”
“Yes.”
Neris laughed.
One of the technicians called down:
“We can hear you.”
ER looked up.
“Good.”
Neris’s tail moved.
She leaned against the platform’s shoulder without thinking.
ER went rigid for half a second.
Then did not move away.
Neris noticed.
Said nothing.
They stood together beneath his own damaged hull.
Above them, professionals repaired the ship.
Far behind them, Earth was reading the first formal message.
Neris whispered:
“I wish Daniel could see this.”
ER said:
“Why?”
“You.”
“In a safety vest?”
“Standing next to your own engine.”
ER considered.
“I suspect he would make an observation about the vest.”
“He would.”
“I would object.”
“You would save the message.”
“Yes.”
By noon, Claire had noticed the car twice.
Dark blue.
Unremarkable.
Parked across the street from her office building in Toronto.
It moved at lunch.
Returned twenty minutes later.
Claire saw it from the lobby and stopped.
Her first thought was media.
Her second was government.
Her third was that Daniel would tell her she watched too many bad television programs.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She almost ignored it.
Then answered.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Claire Mercer?”
“Who is asking?”
A pause.
“Global Affairs Canada.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Of course.
The woman gave a name.
An office.
A callback number.
Claire wrote them down.
“Before we continue,” Claire said, “has my brother authorized you to contact me?”
Another pause.
“Yes. His consent allows identification of you as a knowledgeable support person. It does not authorize disclosure of your private contact information by Xianglume. We located you through Canadian records.”
Claire looked through the lobby glass at the blue car.
“Is that yours?”
“What?”
“The car across the street.”
Silence.
Interesting.
Claire said:
“Tell them subtle would work better if they didn’t come back to the same spot.”
The woman said:
“I cannot comment on operational security measures.”
“So yes.”
“Ms. Mercer—”
“Is Daniel safe?”
“We have no indication he is in immediate danger.”
“Is anyone going to his farm?”
“Not without coordination.”
“Define coordination.”
“With Mr. Mercer.”
Claire relaxed slightly.
“Good.”
“We would like to confirm that you are aware of the events described in the contact message.”
“I am.”
“And that you personally interacted with Neris Vael and ER.”
“Yes.”
Pause.
The woman’s tone changed, not much.
“You’re certain?”
Claire looked out at Toronto traffic.
People crossing the street.
A courier carrying boxes.
A bus.
No visible evidence that humanity had just received a message from somewhere else.
“Yes.”
“Can you describe them?”
“I can.”
“Would you?”
Claire thought about Daniel.
Neris.
ER.
The kitchen table.
The first time she had heard the ship’s voice and realized everyone else treated him like a person because he was one.
“No.”
Another pause.
“May I ask why?”
“Because you’re verifying my identity and involvement. You’re not interviewing me yet.”
Claire heard somebody breathe on the other end.
“Understood.”
“Good.”
“Ms. Mercer?”
“Yes?”
“Your brother made a similar distinction.”
Claire smiled.
“Then you probably have the right Daniel.”
Mara’s call arrived twenty-three minutes later.
She was between patients.
A federal medical liaison introduced himself.
Mara listened.
Then said:
“No.”
There was silence.
The man tried again.
“We are requesting baseline clinical information—”
“No.”
“Dr. Singh—”
“You have whatever Daniel authorized.”
“We have a summary.”
“Then you have baseline information.”
“We would like imaging, bloodwork, medication history, operative records and serial—”
“Ask Daniel.”
“He has authorized medical coordination.”
“He authorized limited disclosure.”
“Yes, but—”
“Limited means limited.”
Silence.
Mara looked through the glass panel in her office door.
A patient waited down the hall.
The man said:
“We are trying to assess whether there is any public-health risk.”
“Good.”
“We cannot do that with incomplete data.”
“Then ask a specific question.”
Another pause.
Mara leaned back.
This was better.
Not good.
Better.
“What exactly do you need to know?”
“Whether there is evidence of transmissibility.”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“As certain as I can be with the information available.”
“Replication outside Mr. Mercer?”
“No evidence.”
“Environmental shedding?”
“No evidence.”
“Pathogen interaction?”
“None observed.”
“Do you have laboratory confirmation?”
“No.”
“So there is uncertainty.”
“Yes.”
“Then quarantine—”
“No.”
The man stopped.
Mara continued.
“Uncertainty is not evidence of danger. You don’t get to turn one into the other because you’re uncomfortable.”
“We have responsibility for public health.”
“And I have responsibility for my patient.”
“We’re on the same side.”
“Then ask him.”
The man sighed.
“Would you participate in a controlled federal medical review with Mr. Mercer’s consent?”
“Yes.”
That surprised him.
Mara smiled.
“I’m not opposed to medicine. I’m opposed to pretending consent is administrative friction.”
A longer pause.
“Understood.”
“Good.”
“Dr. Singh?”
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