Alien Affairs

November 2

After hearing NASA’s announcement that the objects approaching earth in chevron formation were decelerating, Carrie told her team when they met for coffee and donuts, “This proves they aren’t natural. There is nothing near them to exert a gravitational tug.”

Eddy said, “At least this gives us a little more time to think of a solution.”

“Like what? We’ve gotten nowhere.”

“Just because the Chinese told us to take a hike?” Jan said with sarcasm.

“What did you expect? They desperately need free birth control,” Carrie quipped.

Paul said, “And Russia offered to lift shoulder fired missiles to the space station in exchange for the rest of Ukraine. That took balls.”

“Putin’s got nothing if not balls,” Carrie said. “It might be a viable offer if their Strela-2M had a range greater than 2300 meters and we knew for sure that the ships had a heat signature.”

“Since we’re getting more time shouldn’t we start refitting a shuttle with a cruise missile launcher?” Eddy said.

Carrie smiled. “I doubt if we have time for that although it would at least show some effort, but our president won’t listen to his military advisors.”

“So we sit here and wait to be castrated.”

“Speak for yourself.”

In the afternoon the director called Carrie. “Okay, Ms. Alien-Speak, we’ve got a breakthrough. Somebody in Estonia who belongs to SETI Net picked up a transmission that he says came from the direction of the aliens’ ships. He put it on U Tube. I emailed you the URL. Call me after you hear it.”

With her heart hammering so hard she could barely hold the mouse still to click the link. She waited for what seemed like forever for the video to load. The SETI Net subscriber used a slideshow of UFO photographs for the video aspect of his audio recording of the alien transmission. Her hand was still shaking as she clicked the play icon. The sibilant voices took her back to her early days with her uncle. As she absorbed the message Georgia Turnbull entered her office followed by Paul, Jan and Eddy.

At the end of the video the director asked, “Is it them? I couldn’t wait for you to call.”

“It’s them. This is not aimed at us. It’s a debate among the captains of the three craft.”

“Carrie, don’t play silly games—what did they say?”

“They’re going to take a side trip to Mars to see if we have a colony there. We’ve got more time.”

Eddy’s could not contain his exuberance. “Now maybe we can convince the president to refit a shuttle with cruise missiles.”

Turnbull gave Eddy a stern look. She smiled slyly and said, “Fuck the president. We’re going to SpaceX.”

Eddy said, “Cool, can we all go?”

The director scowled.

An hour later Carrie and the director were in a limo on George Washington Parkway en route to SpaceX’s office on 15th Street Northwest, six blocks from the White House. After they crossed the Potomac traffic crawled. The driver discharged the women in front of the office building and departed to drive in circles until summoned. The pair took the elevator to the second floor and were met by the regional manager who ushered them quickly to a conference room where two engineers waited.

Ruben Goldman made brief introductions and said, “Whatever you are here to discuss, let me assure you that we are already in the process of making a Falcon Heavy with a Dragon spacecraft ready to launch.”

Turnbull said, “That’s certainly proactive. Does NASA know this?”

“Of course, we’re attached to NASA at the hip.”

“It’s curious NASA hasn’t told me about it.”

“NASA believes the time constraint is hopeless. They told us we’re wasting our time.”

“We are here to deliver some good news on that issue and see what I can do to incentivize you to get an armed vehicle into space. First let me show you something, if we may use that computer.”

“Be our guests.”

At a gesture from her boss Carrie Googled “SETI Net alien recording” and started the video. The three SpaceX employees exchanged baffled expressions.

“Tell them what they’re saying,” Turnbull said and Carrie translated the three-way conversation.

Goldman said, “How the hell can you know that?”

Turnbull said, “We’re the CIA, Goldman, you’re not fucking with kids.”

“Pardon me. So what do you have in mind?”

“Can you fit your spacecraft with some firepower—ABMs, cruise missiles?”

“Well, Madam Director, you must know that cruise missiles are basically jet planes. They can only fly in air. All anti-missile missile weapon systems are too long and too heavy. A Falcon Heavy could lift it but it’s too much for the Dragon. All the small missiles are designed to navigate in air. The CIA uses them all the time.”

The director looked abashed. “I’m a spymaster, not an aeronautical engineer. What did you have in mind when you began readying the Falcon Heavy?”

“Nothing. We expected the government to devise a plan that required a launch vehicle and since we’re the only game in America we stepped up to the plate.”

“Sorry we’re letting you down.”

“Frankly, you’re letting the world down.”

Turnbull gave him her trademark scowl.

“If I may suggest something,” one of the engineers said. Carrie was happy to note that he did not have a plastic penholder in his shirt pocket. “With the extra time we have now, we could attach anti-ballistic missiles to the exterior of the Dragon and lift them all the way to geosynchronous but we’d have no way to guide them.”

“How many missiles?” Turnbull asked.

“Weight wise, twenty. Space wise, I’d have to check the drawings.”

“If we can find a way to guide them, how soon can you start work on mounting them?”

Goldman said, “As soon as we have the specs on a missile. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are just down the street from our California shop. If you can bring the components together, we can start tomorrow.”

Turnbull asked, “How much money do you need?”

The director promised to fund the project from her discretionary account and to get the Navy and Air Force on board as well as the defense contractors. She phoned the driver and she and Carrie shook hands with their new partners before taking the elevator to the street.

At Langley Carrie found her team working late. “We’ve got a plan,” Eddy told her without bothering to ask about the meeting with SpaceX.

“Go on.”

“Since SETI Net’s video went viral every radio telescope on the planet is tuned to the frequency that the message came in on. So, naturally, we don’t want your reply to be listened to by the whole planet.”

“My reply?”

“Right. We send them one message and tell them how to reach you privately.”

“What are you talking about?”

Paul said, “What geek boy is trying to say is we want to open a dialogue with these guys.”

“Huh?”

“We get you in contact with them and you talk them out of destroying us. It’s straightforward.”

“Straightforward?” In her mind she heard her uncle on his deathbed croak ‘Only humanity.’

Jan got with the team’s enthusiasm. “Right, we got Electronics to knock out the plans for a cell site with mega broadcast power in purely graphic terms. We broadcast that image to them on their frequency with an audio message from you. When they call you, you bond with them.”

“You’ve all lost your fucking minds.”

Eddy said, “That’s beside the point.”

“We’ve thought this through,” Paul said, “what’s the worst that can happen? They don’t pick up?”

“This is like telling ET to call home.”

“It sort of the opposite,” Jan said.

“What if I piss them off?”

“Then we all get our gametes zapped. How is it worse?” Paul asked.

Carrie said, “We’ll have to get the director to approve the idea and she’s busy as hell right now.”

“Carrie, love, you are her darling at the moment. She’ll take your call.” She grimaced at Paul’s familiarity.

“We should have some psych ops input about what to say.”

“Alien psych?” Paul said.

“Christ, you guys, you’re putting me in a hell of a position here. I want some support.”

“You get those little gray assholes on the phone and we’ll see that the Company gives you all the support in the world,” Eddy said with feigned confidence.

Five minutes later Carrie got the director on the phone between calls to General Matranga and Admiral Alexander. She loved the idea. “Run with it. I’ll send you an email giving you unlimited access to whatever assets you need. Do it and keep me posted.”

Before midnight the four Alien Affairs analysts had the plans digitized and an audio file by Carrie saved on a thumb drive. The message was terse and rhetorical: “Can you build this? If so, we need to talk.” They had to do six takes because she kept breaking-up when she gave the aliens her phone number. By the fourth attempt she was adlibbing, “For a good time, call Carrie at...” When the message was in the can, they took it to Communications and flashed the director’s emailed memo. The tech on duty shrugged his shoulders and transmitted the first message aimed at extraterrestrials since Voyager I in 1977. Carrie went home to get some sleep and to contemplate chatting with aliens.

November 3

Carrie found her three coworkers composing scripts for her. “How much time do you think the side trip to Mars will buy us?” Eddy asked her.

“Unfortunately, Mars is retrograde so going there is not out of their way. While they are in Mars’ neighborhood, they are still getting closer to earth.”

“Shit.”

Jan said, “We can only hope they hang around and do some sightseeing on Olympus Mons.”

“How long did SpaceX say it would take them to get missiles into space?” Paul asked.

“They didn’t. The director is getting all the heads together in California so they can figure out what has to be done.”

“Has she told the president?”

“This is election day. The president is preoccupied.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“The media is treating this visit to Mars like it’s a reprieve but they don’t know about the conversation between the craft,” Jan said.

“Are we going to make a press release?” Eddy asked.

“The director insists that we keep it confidential. Some habits are hard to break, I guess.”

“Well, we’re in agreement that when they call you should take a hard stand with them,” Eddy said. “Want to review our script?”

Carrie exaggerated rolling her eyes. “You mean if they call.”

November 4

With the election over, the president felt safe to address the public. Carrie and her cohorts stared at the flat screen with the image of the empty podium on the platform in the pressroom. Soon the president skipped around the curtain and sashayed to the podium.

“I know,” he began, “That everyone is interested in what we believe are extraterrestrial, uh, spacecraft that may be, uh, headin’ toward earth. Now, I don’t want folks to, uh, get worried about this, but I have been informed that, uh, uh, their visit may not be entirely, uh, friendly. This information has been withheld from the public by the previous administration and, uh, every one since Eisenhower. I happen to think it’s time to, uh, quit treatin’ people like babies. Now, I have conferred with the military and we have a, uh, uh, plan to protect the planet from any threat that might exist, but we’re not goin’ to shoot first and, uh, ask questions later. If they want to make peaceful contact, then we’re ready to welcome them. This is an exciting time for whole human race. At last we know we are not alone and we, uh, want to handle this carefully and not make any mistakes. Again let me assure everybody that, should it become, uh, necessary, we will defend the planet.” He turned and scampered back to his office without taking questions.

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag now,” Jan said. “I’m glad the director is three-thousand miles away.”

“Boy is she going to be pissed,” Eddy said. “At least he didn’t drop the big one.”

Paul said, “If he had told the world that we were created by aliens as a biology project...” He didn’t finish the thought.

Carrie reflected on the decades of careful coddling that spared humanity from the anxiety of knowing the sword of Damocles hung over them. “I can’t wait to see the reaction.”

The reaction came swiftly. Everybody from the Moonies to the Flat Worlders took to the street with signs expressing the entire spectrum of opinions. The stock market crashed, liquor and Bible sales skyrocketed. Gun permit applications tripled. Vladimir Putin said that the president was lying, that it was Russia who was prepared to save the planet. The media reported a field in Nebraska where somebody painted a circle a thousand feet in diameter with crosshairs and the word ‘welcome’ in twelve languages.

Eddy said to Carrie, “Why don’t you tell them how write ‘welcome’ so they can actually read it?”

“I’m still bound by my secrecy agreement even if the president doesn’t feel bound by his.”

NASA issued a press release stating that the formation had been sighted again, that it was estimated to be moving toward earth at 105 km/sec.

Paul played with his calculator for several seconds then said, “Twelve days.”