CHAPTER 3
It was times like this that Chris wished he had a wife, children, or some sort of family with whom he could share the excitement of what was happening. He was on his way to meet with the president of the United States to talk about how he found an alien artifact and answered one of the oldest questions known to man—are we alone in the universe? Who did he share the news and excitement with? Only his two dogs, Cricket and Panda. They were awake and up with him, barely, as he left his apartment to catch the early flight to Washington. His parents were dead and his sister was off somewhere, God only knew where, with that missionary husband of hers on yet another trip to save the heathens. Sometimes he envied her; she was living in a way he could only, barely, imagine. Yes, Chris was successful by just about any measure the world could devise, but sometimes he felt like a complete loser. This morning as he left home and dropped his dogs off (again) at the local dog sitting service, was one of those days.
“Is this your first trip to The White House?” asked the woman in the driver’s seat as they approached the gates on the east side of the White House. She wasn’t driving; the security system had now taken over controlling the vehicle as it approached the restricted zone that encircled the White House grounds. They were now no longer in control of reaching their final destination and, if Chris Holt guessed correctly, they were being scanned by every sort of remote sensing device imaginable. With the continued existence of the Caliphate, the threat of terrorism was ever present.
Chris Holt looked out the window as the car slowed and approached the gate, barely even acknowledging her latest attempt at polite conversation. They’d been together now for well over two hours and, as far as Chris was concerned, they might never meet again. To him, such a short interaction didn’t warrant the effort it would take to engage in small talk. He had talking points to review lest he screw up and say the wrong thing to the president. Besides, engaging in small talk was arduous. He would have to pay attention to not only what she was saying, but to her facial expressions, her body language, and, God help him, her verbal inflections. Why was talking to non-technical people so much harder than tensor calculus? He didn’t want to be rude to her, but sometimes it was just easier to be quiet and considered rude than do all the work necessary to talk with someone and engage them. Of course, he thought, that’s probably why I live alone with my dogs. But the thought couldn’t overcome his reluctance to participate in small talk.
“Humph,” she said when she received no response from him. Melissa Reed was part of the President’s Secret Service protection detail, a former US Air Force surrogate pilot, and a very attractive woman. She was clearly not used to being ignored.
A team of inspectors with all sorts of scanning gear approached the car from the gate and proceeded to give it a once-over. Despite all the electronic equipment available, there was also a dog team brought out to sniff. This Chris noticed.
“You’d think they’d have better tech and wouldn’t need the dogs anymore. I guess you guys are still one step out of date,” said Chris, as he tried to not completely ignore her.
“Hardly. There’s nothing better than canine olfactory for finding explosives. If you so much as touched an explosive in the last few days, they’ll alert on you.”
“Really?” That was a claim he would have to research. He made a mental note to look up the status of bomb detection technology when he returned home. This was item number seventeen on his list for the day but it was interesting enough to perhaps move up in priority to somewhere in the top five. He suspected his list would be long after the meeting he was about to attend and briefly wondered if he should actually write any of the list down, but then decided against it. He never forgot such things and there was no reason to expect today would be different than any other day in that regard—meeting with the president, notwithstanding.
The car began moving again and rolled at a leisurely pace as it wound its way around the semicircular drive along the South Lawn and toward the White House. Not even Chris could resist looking out the window as the car took him toward his first-ever meeting with a sitting president. He’d met ex-President Pinto shortly after she’d left office and become the president at Boston University, where he had been working as a post-doc. At the time, he was very impressed. Once he saw how she ran the university after taking over, not so much. She brought in all her crony friends and, at least in Chris’s opinion, ruined the graduate programs there. He wasn’t holding out much hope that President Kremic was any better.
The car stopped and the door was opened by one of the many dark-suited men and women who seemed to be everywhere he looked. As he lifted himself out and into the brisk morning air, he saw NASA Administrator Fuqua in a small crowd of men and women engaged in a discussion. He’d met Fuqua at conference a few years ago, just after he’d been named administrator. This was someone who impressed him.
“Dr. Holt, if you’ll follow me please, we need to get you inside.” He was greeted by one of the men in dark suits and dark sunglasses who placed his hand on Chris’s arm to guide him toward the door.
The other group joined him and, as they walked through the massive doors into the building, they one-by-one introduced themselves and shook hands. Chris wasn’t surprised to learn that most were active duty military, General This or General That. His mind was still preoccupied with the Artifact and he didn’t allocate the effort it would take to remember names.
They didn’t waste any time moving down the wood-floored and ostentatiously adorned hallway to a large conference room already filled with at least twenty other people, all looking expectantly toward them as they entered the room.
Chris was guided to the seat adorned with his name on a placard placed between Administrator Fuqua and some other dignitary.
Moments after taking his seat, President Kremic entered the room, escorted by a man and a woman, all of whom looked harried. Chris couldn’t help but smirk at what he perceived as their sense of self-importance. In the excitement of the moment, he forgot to hide, or at least mask, the smirk.
Kremic looked in person just as he did on screen and during press conferences. With CGI having replaced most actors these days, Chris half-expected the “real” Kremic to look nothing at all like did in the media.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Some of you are already aware of the nature of this meeting, most are not, so I will get right to the point. There is an alien spacecraft in our solar system and we need to figure out what to do about it.” Kremic was known as a man who didn’t beat around the bush.
For the first few moments, no one made a sound. All Chris could hear was his heart beating as he felt his pulse quicken. This was it. His data had undoubtedly been confirmed, as he knew it would be. Then the murmuring began.
“Before we get off track, let me assure you that the information you are about to hear has been reviewed by NASA, the Air Force and the National Security Agency. What’s been found is real and may pose an imminent threat to the security of the United States. Next, I’d like to introduce Dr. Chris Holt, the man who discovered what we’re calling the Artifact. He’s with Space Resources and, from what I understand, he discovered the Artifact with one his of prospecting spacecraft. Dr. Holt, you have the floor.”
President Kremic looked at Chris like he’d known him for years as he motioned for Chris to begin his briefing. The fact was, they’d never actually met. Chris had to assume that Kremic has been fully briefed on his background so that he could give such a disingenuous, but accurate, introduction. A politician.
“Thank you, Mr. President. If you will activate your ’net goggles or corneal implants to channel three, I’ll walk you through how we found the Artifact and what we know about it. First of all, we discovered it using one of our robotic solar sail prospectors . . .” Chris went through the details of the Artifact’s discovery and showed those assembled every significant photo they had taken to date. The briefing took thirty minutes and not a sound could be heard in the room until he finished and asked for questions.
“Dr. Holt. Are you telling us this thing may have been out there for a hundred thousand years? Really?” The question came from one of the suits at the table.
“That’s an upper limit based on our observations of the Artifact’s surface and the very minor age-related damage it has taken. The size of the dust layer, the pitting from the occasional micrometeoroid strike, and other space environmental effects lead me to believe that it can’t possibly have been there for more than a hundred thousand years nor is it likely that it’s been there for less than ten thousand years. It isn’t pristine, but not significantly weathered either.”
“I say we nuke it,” said another of the suits at the table. Chris couldn’t read the man’s nametag; he was at the far end of the table, and it was a long table.
“Out of the question. We have too much to learn here and I don’t want to be the president who starts a war,” said Kremic.
“War with whom?” asked one of the female “suits” who sat on the opposite side of the table from the man who suggested nuking the Artifact.
“War with another, potentially much more advanced technological civilization. War with an alien species that may be as far removed from us as we are from our ancestors on the African savannah,” said Chris.
“Aliens? Surely, they’re long gone if the Artifact has been out there as long as you say it has,” replied the suit.
“I don’t know what agency or organization you represent, but your ignorance and ill-informed suggestions are counterproductive,” said Chris. He’d had just about enough of bureaucratic morons in his career and having one involved in a discussion of this importance and magnitude was galling. He knew as he said it that he was probably being too blunt, but the words came out before he could contain them. Shit. I bet I just made an enemy.
“Dr. Holt, I assure you that . . .”
“Enough!” said the president. “Dr. Holt, do you believe the Artifact might still be inhabited?”
“Mr. President, I don’t know if it’s inhabited or not, but I do know that whoever sent this ship to our solar system has a perspective on time that dwarfs anything in our experience. Do you know how far away the nearest star system is? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s over four light years away. You think that’s close? It isn’t. If you take the Sun-to-Earth distance of ninety-three million miles and shrink that to one foot, then the Earth would be one foot from the Sun and Pluto would be about thirty-eight feet away. On that scale, the nearest star is over fifty miles away. And whatever aliens sent this ship our way probably aren’t from the Centauri system—they’ve come much further. Given what we know about the universe and the laws of physics, this Artifact might have been traveling through deep space for a thousand years before arriving here. Whoever built this thing has to be taking the long view and I would bet that someone or something is out there actively watching us. It certainly could be dead, but my money is on the opposite.”
“Folks, we need options and we need them fast. This is the kind of thing that leaks and we need to have a plan before I have to address the American people about an alien probe being found.”
“Mr. President, we can repurpose the ship we’re building for our next Mars mission and send it to this thing instead,” said NASA Administrator Fuqua. Fuqua’s quick offer to use a NASA resource to visit the Artifact notched him up yet further in Chris’s estimation.
“How soon could it be ready to fly?” asked President Kremic.
“Three to five months. We’ve been making excellent progress and everything is on schedule.”
“That’s a first,” said someone at the table, Chris couldn’t be quite sure who because he hadn’t been looking. He was lost in thought about aliens and what their “alien” motivations might be. He’d been worrying about this since the day the Artifact was discovered and grew more worried as he realized humanity was going to attempt to make first contact.
“Get me a brief on what that’s going to take technically and budget-wise. I’ll need to apprise Congress.”
“Yes, sir. And, um, sir, what about our partners? Once we start making changes to the manifest and CONOPS, the Europeans and Japanese are going to start asking questions,” said Fuqua.
“I’ll deal with our allies. Before we go public with this, I’ll personally inform them, the Chinese general secretary and the Indian president, God help me. And once they know, then it’ll be only a matter of hours or minutes before the story leaks to every media outlet in the world. Those bastards wouldn’t know how to keep something quiet if their lives depended on it. I’ll be making the calls later today and addressing the American people tonight.”
“Tonight? What if there’s panic or something?” asked the suit who suggested nuking the Artifact. Chris could now read his badge and see that he was President Kremic’s director of Homeland Security.
“Tonight,” Alan. No debate.” President Kremic turned to the woman on his right, who Chris knew to be his chief of staff, Rachel Suddoth. She was impeccably dressed in the latest New York fashion and looked to be no more than thirty-five years old. Chris wondered how someone so new to the political scene could be in the room, let alone in such a high position within the administration.
“Rachel, I need you to pull this all together. The talking points for my calls to the allies need to be on my desk in two hours and the text for tonight’s address in four. Take care of getting everything pre-empted; I need to be on every medium where people will have their eyes glued tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“And Rachel, work with Dr. Holt on everything. I want him read in on every detail.”
Chris had been only half-listening until he heard his name. He craned his neck forward and cocked his head to make sure he heard correctly.
“You heard me, Dr. Holt. I need your expertise and as of this moment, you’re cleared at the highest possible level and will be given access to any asset the United States government has available that can help us learn more about our visitors before you get out there to meet them in person.”
Did he just say I’d be going out there to meet them?
“Sounds like your lucky day,” said Rachel with a smile.