It was like she was a different person at night, as Tara herself had put it, but she was yet to have the epiphany that the emptying of wine glasses had something to do with this.
Amid a rocky period in personal terms, Tara’s career as a fashion designer was going better than ever, with each month breaking her previous sales record and each new line’s success bringing her ever closer to full creative control. What had begun as a branding relationship following a short-lived but attention-grabbing modelling career was now a hands-on project for Tara, who while grateful that her sister’s level of celebrity had helped her get a foot in the door was very pleased to be making a name for herself with something that stood alone.
A few weeks earlier, after one particularly messy night following a break-up that made waves in the online world of celebrity worship, Emma had invited Tara to come and stay in Birchwood for a while to gather her head and get back on top of things emotionally. Everyone agreed that some time in the relative tranquility of Birchwood would be good for her, and so far it had been.
This one night of blowing off steam wasn’t going to do any harm, especially when she was out with Clark rather than the usual string of enablers and hangers-on who followed her around in the city, but it had clearly reached its natural end-point.
“Okay, we’re heading home,” Clark called to the only other three people inside the cavernous New Kergrillin’, an alien-themed venture named in honour of the Messengers’ unlocated home world known commonly as New Kerguelen.
The voice of its owner, Phil Norris, beckoned Clark into the restaurant area. “This shrimp ain’t gonna keep and the three of us can’t eat it all,” he called. “You want to take a tub of it home?”
“Why did you order so much?” Clark called back.
“I thought rich guys loved shrimp,” Phil replied. “Shows what I know, huh?!”
“All the cash you’ve made from this place,” Clark said, “and you’ll still never fit in with the old money. Can’t buy class!”
Phil laughed. “Clark, if sliced cucumber and sparkling water is what passes for class these days, those assholes can keep it!”
V minus 95
Caserma Florenzi
Milan, Italy
“Dan McCarthy?” a disbelieving security officer spoke into his phone, sure he must have misheard. “You’re bringing him here? Do we have clearance to—”
“This is under the radar,” a far firmer voice replied down the phone. “Do you know what that means? Make sure the entrance is clear so no one sees us coming in. We can’t ask for clearance without explaining how we know he’s been contacted, so don’t even think about taking this up the chain. Understood? If this goes wrong, it’s your ass.”
The line was dead before a reply could come.
V minus 94
Drive-In
Birchwood, Colorado
Already, shortly before midnight on the eve of Contact Day’s first anniversary, as Clark stepped out of New Kergrillin’ he could both see and hear signs of the unique day that lay ahead.
The drive-in lot itself was completely empty, falling squarely within a temporary lockdown zone instituted by local and federal law enforcement to prevent the dangerous levels of overcrowding that would have doubtlessly occurred if no such action had been taken. Having been the site of the Messengers’ uncloaked landing a year earlier, the drive-in was the focal point of the world’s attention.
The temporary lockdown extended beyond the town limits and was going to cost Phil Norris untold revenue in lost sales from not only New Kergrillin’ but also the various independent stores that filled his U-shaped lot and kicked back a significant percentage of their profits in exchange for such sought-after positioning.
Phil couldn’t be too upset, however, since in the aftermath of Contact Day he had feared that the entire lot would be seized by the government given its unparalleled significance. It had in fact only been out of commission for around two months, during which time all manner of tests were conducted in the key areas. These included the spot where the alien craft touched down, the lines where the Messengers placed forcefield-like walkways to keep the awestruck crowd at bay, and the three distinct spots where Dan, Clark and an on-duty police officer had been involuntarily immobilised.
While the lot which had housed hundreds of media personnel during the days of the IDA leak and on several more occasions since then was now entirely empty, the media appetite to get as close as possible was stronger than ever. Inevitably, the edges of the curfew zone were now media encampments all of their own; and with only one way in and out of the small town, Birchwood felt somewhat like an area under siege.
Helicopters whirred in the distance and a general hubbub from one side of the curfew zone made its way into Clark’s ears as he led Tara outside. He could understand why Dan and Emma had decided to get away from everything; things were crazy enough for the regular citizens of Birchwood, let alone the town’s favourite son who had been under crushing pressure to formally endorse the GCC’s position as the legitimate representative of humanity in any future contact scenarios.
Dan had been accused of selfishness by some who thought that his silence reflected his desire to position himself as humanity’s continued point of interplanetary contact — an assessment that could hardly have been further from the truth — while others had leaned upon Richard Walker-era soundbites in accusing Dan of being a double-agent working secretly with Chinese and Russian officials to undermine the GCC.
Most fantastically of all were the supposedly serious suggestions that Dan may have been compromised by the aliens and used as something between an avatar and a puppet to forward their own machiavellian plans. This didn’t hold up to a lot of scrutiny given that the Messengers had unconditionally saved Earth from cometary destruction, and most dismissed the memetically spread theory for what it was: an attention-seeking ploy by an anti-contact group of planetary isolationists known as the GeoSovs.
Any understanding of the GeoSov movement had to begin with an understanding of its predecessors who had come in the form of the so-called Antidotalists and Welcomers. The Antidotalists, now consigned to history, were a nihilistic eco-terrorist organisation who decried humanity as a scourge on Earth’s fragile ecosystem and conducted deadly attacks on targets such as life-extension researchers and agricultural experts in an effort to keep humanity’s numbers down. Rather than fade away, the Antidotalist movement had essentially morphed into the Welcomer movement as a means of staying relevant following the discovery of Il Diavolo.
As the name suggested, the humanity-hating Welcomers actively welcomed the comet and did all they could to sabotage the GSC’s defensive efforts. Their most famous attack came in Colorado Springs, where Emma Ford and Timo Fiore were seriously injured during a press conference officially scheduled to announce the latter’s plan for a last-ditch effort to change the comet’s course. Ever since the events of Contact Day, a hard core of Welcomers had once again rechristened themselves — this time as GeoSovs, pertaining to their view that the Earth should and must be sovereign and free from extraterrestrial intervention.
Some high-profile GeoSovs, all of whom consistently distanced themselves from violent attacks carried out in the group’s name, were extremely well spoken and skilled in the art of personal marketing. TV stations, always looking for controversy, gave a platform for these individuals to share watered-down versions of their positions. Too often, the GeoSovs were allowed to come out of interviews and discussion panels looking like victims whose views were being unfairly dismissed by a corporate elite who they claimed couldn’t be trusted not to sell humanity down the river.
Much had been written in discerning publications about the fact that the GeoSov movement had somehow managed to whitewash its past, what with the Antidotalists’ calls for forced depopulation and the Welcomers’ attempts to doom humanity having apparently been relegated to mere footnotes in the mainstream media now that future contact was the topic of hot debate, but few peo
ple read such articles. For the vast majority who got their information from TV news and social media channels — where the highest-profile GeoSovs were particularly effective at gaining attention among the young — there wasn’t necessarily an automatic mental connection between the GeoSovs and their direct predecessors.
Every attack blamed on the GeoSovs was held up by the group’s leaders as “yet another false flag operation” designed to discredit their innocent goal of keeping Earth free from alien intervention. The language of false flags and shadowy elites was more effective than ever after everything that had happened in the past few years, given that Dan McCarthy had fought against an often hostile media and ultimately exposed a meta-conspiracy so grand that no one could ever have believed it without seeing the truth with their own eyes.
In a world where the entire planet could fall for an alien-related hoax which ultimately came true, the GeoSov movement understood that presenting itself as an underdog in a battle against the ill-defined “powers that be” was the key to winning hearts and minds.
Serious commentators who wrestled with the question of what exactly the GeoSovs’ endgame might be came up short of finding an answer. Like the flat-Earth theory which had recently seen an unexpected revival that baffled experts in related fields, no one could be sure whether the mouthpieces of the GeoSov movement truly believed what they were saying or if they were knowingly and skilfully deceiving a cohort of citizens ready to believe anything that contradicted the so-called establishment position.
Each conspiracy theory that came true made the ground more fertile for the next; and ever since the biggest one of all was decisively proven real on Contact Day, a new favourite was that future contact with the Messengers would occur to the detriment of everyday humans and benefit only the same elites who had lied about so much for so long.
Dan had been relentlessly baited by the GeoSovs for months, keeping quiet largely because he knew it was impossible to win an argument with people who didn’t care about the truth. But the more airtime the GeoSovs received and the more they called Dan out, the more it weighed on his shoulders.
His continued popularity among the general public remained unquestioned, but his silence over two particular accusations was beginning to raise questions. The first of these was that he was secretly working as an intermediary between the Messengers and the political elites he had once persistently claimed to despise. The second, and even more fanciful, held that the reason he was no longer vocally standing up for common people’s interests was that his body and mind had been taken over by the Messengers during their physical contact a year earlier. Dan saw this second accusation for what it was: a way for the GeoSovs to reliably secure the kind of mocking responses they needed to fuel and sustain their ridicule-based victim mentality.
It was all so convoluted and, as far as Dan could tell, so utterly pointless. The whole GeoSov issue didn’t make sense however he looked at it, so he tried not to think about it too often.
Clark, meanwhile, had long thought that the media was playing a dangerous game in presenting certain GeoSovs as serious commentators or figures of fun at worst, and much of the pre-anniversary preparations he had been involved in with his colleagues at the police precinct focused on ensuring that no GeoSov-backed attacks would derail any anniversary celebrations.
Clark’s role in the police force kept his mind occupied and was welcomed by all; the presence of someone so well liked by the public helped with community relations, even around Birchwood where such things didn’t tend to be problematic.
Tonight, however, not even the good citizens of Birchwood itself would be allowed near the drive-in once 4am rolled around and the security operation shifted into maximum gear. Clark took a long look around the lot before he got into his car, stone cold sober. Tara climbed into the passenger seat.
“What’s the hold up?” she asked, tired and cold.
Clark looked across to the far side of the lot, remembering the landing like it was yesterday. He would never forget the fear of being frozen on the spot as the Messengers inserted a sharp communications cable into Dan’s neck and he would never forget the relief that flooded through his veins when they left and Dan was okay. The next relief that had come with the confirmation that they had diverted Il Diavolo’s path was like nothing Clark could ever have imagined, so total in its calming effect over his nervous system, and after all of that he was fresh out of ideas as to how anyone could possibly question the Messengers’ motives, much less his brother’s.
Dan had been through too much, and Clark sometimes wondered why the Messengers didn’t just come back and put everything straight. He knew there was no reason to believe they would care about something as socially constructed as an anniversary celebration, but he allowed a small part of himself to hope that they just might show up again — that they just might show up to tell the GeoSovs to fuck off, to tell the GCC and ELF nations to stop their dick-measuring contest and get around a single table, and to tell Dan that they could and would reach out to him again if they ever had to do so.
That final point was one that kept Dan up at night, out of fear that the invasive government tests he and Emma underwent every month might have damaged whatever it was that made their necks hurt when the Messengers were close and wanted to communicate.
Dan knew better than anyone how committed the Messengers and their mysterious Elders were to the principle of ‘minimal necessary intervention’, and it concerned him greatly that another public appearance might be considered too major and destabilising an intervention given the growing divisions between East and West. With fading confidence that more discreet contact would still be possible after his neck had been invasively tested so often, Dan’s mood often dropped dangerously when he considered this for too long.
The vast majority of the world idolised Dan McCarthy, but Clark didn’t envy his life for a single second.
“Clark,” Tara called, “you told me we were going home…”
He looked in at her shivering in the front seat and realised how long he had been ponderously staring across the vacant lot. “Sorry,” he said, getting in without further ado and immediately handing her his jacket to cover her legs beyond the point where her own coat stopped.
“Such a gentleman,” she said, gladly accepting it.
Clark laughed as he turned the ignition. “I’ve been called a lot of things, sweetheart…”
“Me too, but no one ever calls me sweetheart.”
Clark glanced sideways and saw Tara looking at him quite intently. “Then I guess we’ll call it quits,” he said. “And remember, I’ll come next door tomorrow morning and then we’re gonna stay inside all day, until the anniversary is over and everything is back to normal. Do you want me to let myself in if you’re still asleep?”
“I want you to stay with me tonight,” Tara said, very straightforwardly.
“Uh…”
“In a different bed, obviously,” she added quickly. “I’m in the spare room so you could have theirs or the couch. It’s just, I’m really not built to be on my own, Clark — even when things are okay. But lately they’re not… lately I’m not doing so good. I went to a doctor and he gave me—”
“I’ll stay,” Clark interrupted. “You don’t need to tell me anything else. You can, but you don’t need to.”
“Thanks,” Tara said, a small and unusually insecure smile briefly crossing her lips. Ironically, given that she was wrapped up in two coats and most of her appearance was hidden by the low light, she somehow looked far more exposed in Clark’s eyes than was normally the case. He knew her well, way beyond the caricature of the always smiling and ultra-successful fashion designer cum media darling that the public saw when they looked at her, but he had never seen her seem so… vulnerable.
“Just remember that no one is built for the lives we live,” he said, “and especially yours. This media attention isn’t normal. The secret we had to live with last year wasn’t normal. Being Emma’s sister isn’t
normal, and neither is being Dan’s brother. They get back in a few days but even before then, you’re not on your own, okay? We’ve got Mr Byrd, my dad, Phil… and that’s just right here in Birchwood. People are with us all across the world.”
“Don’t forget we’ve got each other, too,” she said, almost inflecting it into a question.
“Always,” Clark nodded, his voice firm. “Wherever this ride takes us, we’re in it together.”
V minus 93
Caserma Florenzi
Milan, Italy
Dan McCarthy didn’t know where he was or how long he had been unconscious from the concussive effect of a rough tackle to the ground. All he knew was that as he looked around the nondescript office in which he had been placed, none of the several faces he saw were Emma’s.
“What did they tell you?” a man asked when he saw Dan’s eyes opening at last, his voice familiar. His nose was covered in a thin bandage, stained by the blood Dan had drawn with a well-placed headbutt.
The other men were all dressed similarly and all but one appeared to be in their late twenties or thirties. The exception, less burly and clearly a few decades older, waved a hand to silence his younger colleagues.
“I know you must have a head full of questions, Mr McCarthy,” the older man said, “and I want to begin with an apology for how things turned out at the lake house. My name is Frank Livingston and I work for an agency of the United States federal government. We’re currently sitting in a US military installation called Caserma Florenzi, which was the closest secure site we could utilise for this important meeting.”
“Meeting?” Dan echoed, disdain and incredulity dripping from his voice in equal measure. “You’re going to pretend you called me in here for a meeting instead of abducting me for whatever the hell this really is?”
The Final Call Page 3