AmEarth

Peter Johansen was sitting in his office with the strange draped windows at his back. He was still questioning what the intention was behind yesterday’s news report. He left his office and went to the water cooler, where many bureaucrats shared their thoughts and shot the breeze. They all hushed when he arrived, so he grabbed a cup of water and continued on his way. He entered the empty elevator and pressed the L button. On the way down, the elevator stopped at floor 39, where Peter caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a military strategy meeting through the glass partitions.

A general entered the elevator, and Peter exited onto the same floor without looking back. As he reached the glass doors that separated the elevator lobby from the central room, he could see the door’s keypad green light flicker on as he approached. His clearance level allowed him free rein in the building. He entered the room and saw a crowd of military personnel manning computer terminals, staring intently at the large wall of monitors. The engulfing of New Zealand was the clear focus of this military nerve center. Peter saw an empty computer terminal and sat down to watch. He fit in perfectly, and the personnel didn’t even blink. They were busy going about their own important business.

On a centrally located screen, an image had been taken from the sky of Mount John University Observatory in real time. Helicopters had landed on the same road that Pat Jackson had been traveling earlier. The operators around Peter gave orders to different military personnel in seemingly random ways. One operator close to Peter was talking calmly, instructing a team on what to do at the observatory.

“Do you have him in custody? Good. Now, get the computer hard drives and disable the station…Well, ask Roberts, he knows how to do it…Get the telescope disabled,” the operator ordered into a headset.

Peter could not understand everything that was going on around him, but it was interesting. Why were they taking astronomers and observatories instead of military bases? On a map, seven different observatories had been marked, but Mount John University was the main focus. Peter knew this because the monitor blatantly said “Primary Target” in red letters across the bottom. Telescopes were obviously an important aspect in defending the Earth from an alien attack, but it was strange that they needed the military. He kept listening.

“Roger that…Get Professor Cook into the transport; he is to be taken to H.W. immediately…Once the telescope is out, leave a surveillance unit in place until further instructions…Good. Roger that.”

Peter got up and discreetly left the room. He had a vague sense of the military capability of AmEarth, but he was now experiencing the immense power behind it firsthand. He strode to the main hallway and noticed a set of stairs. He went up another flight to level 40. There, he found more of the same, but the monitors were not focused on New Zealand at all. There were monitors showing images of different parts of the world, also in real time. Many images showed doomsayers on street corners and personnel being sent to quell these agitators. The control that AmEarth had was obviously worldwide, and the sudden sense of Big Brother made him uncomfortable. In this room, the monitors had colors on their borders that ranged from green and yellow to orange and red as they approached the center. This visually showed the places of greater interest to AmEarth based on their emergency level. Peter saw that there was one map on a monitor showing Germany, Poland, and Russia, ringed by a big red circle. The protests and guerrilla issues in the central area of Eastern Europe were clearly a top priority for AmEarth. Peter hadn’t been aware that the Central European area was so problematic until that moment.

Russia, Poland, and Germany were historically war-torn, and now AmEarth was having problems there, as history would naturally have predicted. Peter was leaving the theater when he noticed a final image. On one monitor, a crowd of protesters held signs, one of which read “Außerirdischen Lüge!” Peter had never seen those two words together, but could make out what the intent was from his high school German lessons. Alien Lie, or Extraterrestrial Lie, to be more precise. It was obvious that in Germany there was dissent. From the monitor board, Peter clearly discerned that Europe housed most of the AmEarth dissidents.

Peter left and made his way to the lobby. From there he called Scott, who was making out with Cate in his bedroom while their mothers engaged in a joint panic frenzy in the kitchen. As Scott’s wafer rang, he peeled it off his jacket hanging from the swivel chair.

“Scott? We need to talk,” Peter began quickly, trying to convey the importance of his request in his tone.

“Where and when?” Scott asked.

“How about a miso soup?”

“Only if it’s Han’s.”

“Exactly. Half an hour?”

“It will take me an hour, Dad. I’m not in the city.”

“Okay, see you in an hour then.”

They both knew that Han was the owner of Zutto, their favorite place for miso soup, and they referred to no restaurant name during the conversation in the event that it was being monitored. Peter was giving his son the opportunity for a chat with full privacy, well away from Barbara and Brianna. He knew that it was a whim, but he missed spending time with Scott, and a father-son chat would do them both the world of good. He called his secretary and cancelled all of his appointments for the next two hours. He took the secret tunnel across the river and parked at the UN headquarters, from where he could walk to Zutto and leave enough time for Scott to get there. When his son finally arrived, Peter was standing outside the restaurant on the corner of 52nd Street and First Avenue.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, son.”

“Dad, I need you to listen to me with an open mind.”

“I always do,” Peter asserted.

“No, Dad, you don’t! But this time, I need you to really listen closely. Let me just say it and then you can tell me how wrong I am. Okay?”

“Okay, Scott. I’m here because I know that you’ve been trying to say something to me, and I’ve been out of touch. You are the most important person in the world, Scott, besides Bri and your Mom, of course. You can tell me anything. Come on, son.”

“Not here.”

“What?”

Peter rolled his eyes, but Scott stood up and walked away on the sidewalk.

“Please, let’s just walk. I’ll talk as we walk.”

“Okay.”

“It all started with Bolivia.”

Peter rolled his eyes again.

“Bear with me, please. I’m taking a statistics course and my homework was to find the odds of certain things; you know, like what the odds are of landing on a zero in roulette.”

“One in thirty-eight.”

“Dad, let me finish. Basically, I calculated the surface of the earth, and the odds of anything landing in a major city in Bolivia are astronomical. The Earth has 510 million square kilometers, and Sucre is about thirty-six square kilometers. The landing in Sucre represents a coincidence of fourteen million to one. You said it was lucky because it helped tip the scales of public opinion, remember?”

“Yes, it was lucky.”

“Have you ever heard of anyone that lucky? Or an entire planet being that lucky?”

“Scott, have you been discussing this with anyone? Did you tell your math teacher about the landing?”

“No, dad. No. I did this exercise for my own knowledge. Only you and I know this.”

“Good.”

“Dad, that’s not all. Please listen. I was online with a friend on wafer chat—a friend from really far away. You know how I play online with people all over.”

“Yes.”

“Well, he is in New Zealand, and they were being invaded by AmEarth as I spoke to him, at the same time you were on TV. It was happening at the exact same time. They were told on the news of the imminent threat to places without the WPP. Do you know what that means? The news of the new alien threat and their hostile intentions was timed to match up with the invasion of the last free country in the world!”

“Scott—”

“Wait, Dad, you said that you would listen…”

“Okay, is there much more? The last “free” country…my god!” Peter was shocked by his son’s bold conspiracy beliefs, even though they hadn’t been the first.

“One last unbelievable thing also happened, but you have to promise that you won’t ask how I learned about it.”

“Scott, if I can’t verify the authenticity of the information, then it’s worthless anyway.”

“Oh, this can be verified, but you just need access to a sixty-inch refractor telescope and a scientist who can use it.”

“What? A large telescope like in an observatory?”

“Yes.”

Peter was a bit aghast that his son could know any of this, let alone all of it. They continued walking north on First Avenue, ignoring everything around them.

“Dad, please let me finish. I got my hands on a document from an observatory in Mount John, New Zealand,” Scott played his trump card triumphantly.

Peter listened intently, but feigned disinterest. He knew that his son was onto something, but this could be dangerous, so he needed to stay cool. Hearing about Mount John University in New Zealand twice in a single day was too much.

“This document is a study of Kepler 3763, and it says the planet is uninhabitable. You are aware that astronomers don’t study the full scope of the cosmos; they vie for areas and time on telescopes and only get to study certain angles. Space is huge, like…ridiculously huge. So very few astronomers have ever studied Kepler 3763. You understand that, right?”

Peter stopped and looked at his son intently.

“Is that it?” Peter asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that this information reached you because you are a minister’s son? That someone with the desire to hurt AmEarth might feed false information to you?”

“But it was Cate’s father who mentioned the landing in Sucre.”

“Yes, and that part is a strange coincidence, but that’s all it is. We can’t prove otherwise.”

“What about the invasion of New Zealand? Don’t you think it was timed perfectly with your announcement?”

“Does that mean that there is no threat? New Zealand is a rather small peanut in the scope of the whole world. I don’t think AmEarth announced the alien threat to cover up an invasion of that tiny island, do you?”

Scott seemed less certain of his thesis as his father parsed out his arguments, unraveling them before his eyes.

“And the Kepler 3763 document?” Scott said.

“I think that one got to you because of who you are. They want you to get to me. Kepler 3763 has been seen by every astronomer in the planet and they all know it is the source of the alien communications. You should give me the document and tell me exactly how you got it.”

“Spam.”

“What?”

“It came in my junk mail.”

“And you brought it up like this to me? Please, son, drop all of this. We are an AmEarth family. We work for the government and we need to trust it. Okay? I want you to study…don’t let these crazies get to you.”

“Do you want a copy of the document?”

“Of course not; you should just delete it before it drops a Trojan into your computer and affects things that actually matter! It might be selling you things that you don’t need based on your location and habits by data mining your computer. Please, son, just delete it. Promise? Not a word of this to your mother.”

“Scout’s honor.”

They finished their chat with some familial small talk before Peter shifted to a happier topic.

“Let’s get a grilled cheese and a milkshake…what do you say?” Peter said.

“Not healthy at all, Dad. Mom will kill you,” Scott replied instantly, relying on his upbringing to know the right answer.

“So now you’re a snitch?”

“Nope.”

“Then let’s go.”

In the coffee shop, Peter sat and ordered for them both. They talked about other things while waiting for the food. When the meal arrived, the waiter took out a white wand device that shone a white light directly on the food. He moved it slowly over the plates and they all saw the wand turn a slight green hue as the light changed. The waiter quickly removed the wand from view and left the table. The device had scanned the food for any living organisms at the microscopic scale. Green meant that the food contained nothing harmful. Peter and Scott ate their sandwiches and drank their milkshakes quietly.

“Son, do you have your laptop with you?”

“It’s in my room.”

“I don’t want you to forget to delete that crazy stuff. I can’t be exposed to subversive information like that. Remember, I’m a minister now…”

“I’ll do it as soon as I get home. I promise.”

“Okay,” his father agreed.

A few minutes later, they parted ways, and Scott drove back to Connecticut, where he went upstairs and opened his laptop. He dragged the Kepler document into a hidden file in the operating system of his computer by going to Applications > Stuffit > Documentation and making a new folder simply called 01. He moved the Kepler file there. The location made it difficult to find, and renaming the files by number made them look like a boring part of the program. Scott could tell his dad that he had erased the file, and his father would never find the documents. Even if he pried with a full search, the Kepler reference would no longer show up as part of the search. His wafer rang.

“Mr. L,” Scott answered.

“Hi, Scott. Did you read the file?” Landon asked.

“Nope, not yet.”

“Did you copy it to the USB I gave you?”

“Doing it now.”

Scott copied the file to Landon’s USB drive, which he fished out from the bottom of his backpack.

“I’m outside your home. Bring it to me,” Landon ordered.

“Where? You’re outside?”

Scott looked out of his bedroom window at a silver Toyota Corolla sitting in the driveway. The USB finished copying and he plucked it from the side of his computer.

“I have it. I’ll be right there,” Scott said.

“Scott, delete your copy first.”

“Okay, I’ll delete it now,” Scott lied.

“Wait!”

“What? Why?”

“I need to make sure that the information is on the drive.”

“Too late, I just emptied the trash!” Scott lied again.

“Damn. Well, bring it down. I sure hope it’s on the drive.”

Mr. Landon sat in his car with a white laptop computer on his knee. Scott entered the car on the passenger side to get out of the cold. He glanced down at the white laptop, which had a pink decal covering the Apple logo.

“It’s my girlfriend’s…don’t ask,” Landon said when he saw Scott’s gaze.

“No worries.”

Mr. Landon inserted the USB drive into his computer and accessed the file without downloading it onto his girlfriend’s computer. He opened the file. The report that Scott had already seen was there, and he began to read it.

“Just skip to page 111,” Scott advised.

“So you did read it,” Mr. Landon glanced sidelong at him, suspicious.

“Yes. Sorry…”

Mr. Landon read the conclusion, and Scott watched his expression. Kepler 3763 was evidently uninhabited by any life form.

“Scott…Are you sure that you deleted this from your computer?”

“Absolutely.”

“You just lied to me about having read it. How can I know that you’re not lying now?”

“I did delete it. I swear!”

“You’re too close to the government to be messing around in this. You shouldn’t be engaged in any of this. Have you told anyone about this document?”

“No.”

“No one in your family?”

“You mean my dad? Even if I did tell him, he wouldn’t believe me,” Scott admitted with a shake of his head.

“Just forget about everything that’s happened recently and go back to your normal life. Please, Scott, get this out of your head. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So…have you heard back from any colleges yet?” Landon tried to change the subject, with genuine interest in Scott’s future.

“Nope, still too early.”

“Where did you apply?” Landon asked.

“The usual—Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown.”

“Don’t worry, you’re a shoo-in for the League.”

“I hope so, or my dad will lose it.”

“Well, your dad may be the reason you’ll be accepted. He’s on everyone’s radar now.”

“I guess that’s true.”

They looked at each other over a strange extended pause. Scott pulled on the door handle and stepped out of the car.

“See you in class.”

“Yep.” Scott walked slowly up to the house, not looking back.