The only other possibility that came to Dan’s problem-seeking mind was that even if the plaques were present, intact, and verifiably alien, Hans Kloster might have read too much into the data. The messages might look like gibberish, he thought, raising more questions than they answered.
This wouldn’t be ideal, but the more Dan thought about it the more he recognised that it wasn’t exactly a nightmare scenario. After all, the big question — which was and always had been “are we alone?” — would be answered, once and for all.
Dan already knew the answer to this question in his heart. He always had, even before the avalanche of evidence he had recently uncovered. But despite this, he still wanted to hear it confirmed. And, like Billy, he wanted it to come from President Slater.
Dan couldn’t explain this any better than Billy had been able to. In general terms, there were very few people Dan considered less worthy of trust than those capable of making it to the top in politics. Slater, who had recently ordered a midnight raid on Dan’s house, deserved even less than the rest.
Dan stopped for a second and tried to observe his own thoughts. He smiled; the truth was now so close and so inevitable, his main concern was who was going to tell it. This moment of reflection allowed Dan to see the bigger picture and realise that the identity of whoever made the big announcement would be a footnote in history, right next to his own name as the catalyst for the whole thing.
It didn’t matter who made the announcement; the truth was all that mattered. Everything else, as they said, was mere detail.
* * *
Several hours later, after a short sleep of his own, Dan lifted his backpack from under his seat and took out the tablet Emma had given him. He went to Billy Kendrick’s official website and navigated to the live stream of the ET Weekender.
It was now late afternoon in Myrtle Beach and though many of those with weekend camping passes would be arriving later in the evening, there was already a great turnout. Stats on Billy’s website boasted that 16,000 three-day passes and almost as many one-day tickets had been sold.
Dan couldn’t help but be impressed. The tickets were cheap — that was an important point — but it had still been no mean feat for Billy to sell so many, particularly when no one really knew what to expect. The weather had certainly been kind, with the forecast showing mid-80s and partial cloud cover with no wind to speak of; warm enough to be pleasant while reducing the chances of sunstroke.
The schedule for the weekend was written to the right of the video window. Dan recognised so many names; music acts, football players, TV personalities, and two authors Dan had liked for years. Billy mentioned very few of these names during the show Dan appeared at before publishing the Kloster letter, so Dan could only assume that they had been persuaded to attend by the seismic shift in public opinion and the explosion of Billy’s celebrity that had occurred since then.
The only scheduled event underway so far was the opening tailgating party, which Dan could see taking place in a huge designated area of the massive site. The cars and trucks were parked on grass. It was going to get muddy as hell.
Everything looked so good; Dan would have loved to be there. But on reflection he didn’t regret the Italy trip, which had seemed like a good idea at the time and might just have saved his life. No one had spoken about that, but Dan knew that Clark and Emma must have thought about it. Slater’s decision to raid Dan’s house was the desperate act of a desperate woman, and Dan had no confidence that his presence in the house would have stopped her from sending the agents in. And if she had, Dan knew exactly how Clark would have reacted to the intruders; however woefully outnumbered and outgunned he might have been.
Dan didn’t often give much thought to any of the Big Questions other than the obvious one that the Kerguelen sphere would soon put to bed, but he readily accepted that his trip to Italy had been no accident. He didn’t think that Timo was a guardian angel or anything like that, but the invitation had certainly come at the right time.
The live pictures from Myrtle Beach cut to a different camera. Now, rather than the mass of tailgaters, Dan could see the main entrance. Cars and buses were pouring in. Billy Kendrick, looking almost comically casual in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts and cowboy hat combo, stood at the entrance and high-fived drivers as they slowed to enter.
Dan was listening through his headphones but couldn’t hear Billy; the audio came from a band playing on a stage that hadn’t yet been featured on the main stream.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw Clark’s legs move suddenly. “You been asleep?” Dan asked.
Mid-stretch, Clark lazily extended his arm into the aisle and raised his thumb. He then reached into his pocket and took out his phone. Seconds later, he turned round to Dan as though he’d just heard a gunshot.
“Are you watching TV?”
Dan lifted his headphones off one ear. “Hmm?”
“Are you watching TV?”
“I’m watching the stream from Billy’s thing in Myrtle Beach,” Dan said.
“Well kill the stream and go to your TV app.”
“What station?”
Clark smiled. It was the kind of smile Dan didn’t often see from him; not sarcastic or teasing… real.
“Shut up,” Dan said, his expression mirroring Clark’s. “All of them?”
“Every single one,” Clark confirmed.
Dan shut down the Kendrick stream as quickly as his fingers would allow. While looking for the unfamiliar tablet’s TV app, he heard Clark calling to wake Emma then telling her to look at her phone.
After seconds which felt like minutes, Dan finally found his tablet’s stupid TV icon. It didn’t look anything like any TV he had ever seen, but he was too excited to be annoyed for long. Once it loaded he chose ACN, even though Clark had told him it wouldn’t matter.
Despite having selected Blitz News rather than ACN, Emma saw the same picture as Dan: the press room at the White House, bustling with activity but with no sign of President Slater. She read the Blitz headline to Dan and Clark, not sure what station they were watching: “President Slater, PM Godfrey and other world leaders to address their citizens at 20:00ET.”
“What time is it?” Dan asked. He didn’t know where they were or even what time zone they were in. Looking outside to gauge the light offered no help, what with their westward flight making a mockery of Earth’s rotation.
“Four minutes to,” Emma said.
“To what? Eight?”
“Yeah.” She looked at Dan again. “They must have got it open. What else could it be?”
“Maybe that they didn’t get it open?” Clark thought out loud.
“No,” Emma said. “That would just be a statement like yesterday’s. This is world leaders. This is it. It has to be. Capital-D.”
“Capital-D,” Dan parroted, staring open-mouthed at the screen in his hands.
As well as the time and the headline, Emma saw one more thing on Blitz News. It was a small clickable option in the corner of the screen, which would have been accessible via the remote’s red button were she watching on a TV. The words intrigued her — “Choose Feed” — so she clicked the link.
There were six tiles arranged in two rows of three. From the small thumbnails Emma could see that the first feed was the one from the White House and the second featured William Godfrey. She clicked on Godfrey without even looking at the others.
The clock now read 19:57, but William Godfrey was already seated at his desk in the middle of the British night, staring into the camera with an unreadable poker face as he waited for the clock to reach eight. Though it was after midnight in London, the upcoming announcement hadn’t been timed to fit into prime time TV schedules on the US east coast, as was normally the case, but rather came as quickly as possible after the end of the day’s analysis in Argentina.
Having seen with some surprise that Godfrey was respecting the agreed upon embargo, Emma returned to the choice of feeds. After Slater and Godfrey she saw t
he leaders of the other traditionally powerful nations who had been involved in the experiments on the sphere: Russia, China, and France.
Another new and smaller clickable option in the extreme top-left corner was marked “Nor/Arg”, which evidently would have taken her to the leaders of the two involved countries Blitz had deemed least relevant.
The sixth live feed of the main options — after those labelled London, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and Paris — was Birchwood. More specifically, it was a huge crowd scene at the drive-in.
For Emma, looking at the makeshift screen she and Trey had arranged at the last minute was more than a little surreal, and Birchwood’s name being up in lights alongside iconic global cities hammered home just how entrenched Dan’s story was in the broader issue.
“The drive-in is on Blitz,” Emma announced as the clock hit 19:59.
Dan shook his head. His eyes then widened, as though regaining focus. “Both of you come over here,” he said. “We shouldn’t be watching this on three different screens.”
The jet had a large screen built into the wall facing all of their seats, of course, but their earlier efforts to turn it on had failed and none of them wanted to disturb the pilots.
Clark hurried over and stood behind Dan’s seat, leaning over the top. Emma squeezed in beside Dan, half on the wide seat and half on his leg. He barely noticed. His entire focus was on the empty podium.
Dan had expected Slater to be sitting at her desk, like presidents normally were for big announcements, but this seemed like one of those details that didn’t really matter.
“Don’t you want to see everyone at the drive-in?” Emma asked.
“They’ll still be there when Slater’s finished talking,” Dan said, “but she’s only going to say this once. I want to see it.”
When he put it like that, Emma couldn’t argue.
A headline popped up on ACN to tell the viewers it was now eight o’clock.
“Where the hell is she?” Clark asked.
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “Godfrey was sitting in his chair waiting for the time to—”
Dan raised a hand to silence Emma, not meaning to be rude but sure that he could hear something. He could: a growing commotion as President Slater entered the room.
Even before she reached the podium, Dan could see that Slater’s hair had been rushed and that her stars and stripes brooch was rotated at a 45-degree angle. He knew that these were trivial little things, but it was unusual for Slater to display even the slightest visual imperfection. His mind likened it to Emma’s insistence on always looking “un-nitpickable”, but amplified a thousand times since Slater saw herself as the leader of the free world.
Beyond these slight imperfections, the President looked incredibly pale; like she’d just been sick a thousand times, as Dan’s inner voice put it. Slater reached the podium and turned around. Her eyes were on the ground, her breathing shallow. Plenty of presidents had been sombre when making important addresses, including Slater, but they’d never looked like this.
President Slater eventually settled into her position behind the podium and looked directly into the camera. She looked broken. There was a long pause.
“Dan,” Clark whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t like this.”
D minus 0
White House
Washington, D.C.
“My fellow Americans,” President Slater began, seconds after closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “I stand before you this evening to humbly relay the content of a statement I have just been given.
“But before I read this statement, which is the same one that has been given to the respective leaders of nations around the world, I would like to say one thing: effective immediately, all IDA operations have been suspended. Richard Walker is being sought for questioning and two of his longest serving staff have already been detained.”
Cameras clicked in the press room. Feet shuffled. A phone rang loudly for several seconds but President Slater didn’t glare at its owner. She cleared her throat and glanced at the A4 sheet in her hand.
“As we all know,” she continued, “the metallic sphere discovered in Argentina has been thoroughly examined under the watchful eyes of a broad team of international observers. A little over thirty minutes ago, I received some extraordinary news.”
The camera jerked suddenly as someone knocked into it. The wobbling picture revealed Jack Neal and other concerned staff standing against the side wall, none of them other than Jack knowing what Slater was about to say. Of all the government employees in the room, the only ones with their game faces on were the security personnel keeping a close eye on the reporters in preparation to silence the rowdy and eject the hysterical.
“What news?” one voice yelled out above the others, interrupting in a way that had almost become a tradition whenever Slater spoke in public.
President Slater didn’t acknowledge the question. She did, however, raise a palm to simultaneously call off the security guards and quieten the crowd as their collective murmurs grew in volume. Most of them obliged, keen to hear what she had to say in response. The few voices that continued came from too far back to come across clearly on TV.
“Earlier this afternoon,” Slater said, making certain that her voice was heard, “the sphere was successfully opened.”
Every voice fell silent.
“I want to make clear that I am still digesting this information even as I’m giving it to you, and that I will continue to do everything in my power to protect and serve the citizens of this country. At this stage, it is my duty to deliver the following news: we are not alone.”
It was, now, a different kind of silence.
It was, now, as though feet knew better than to shuffle and phones knew better than to ring.
The buzzing wings of a fly, who apparently did not know better, flew close enough to the President’s podium to be relayed at low volume through televisions across the world.
The assembled press pack stayed silent in rapt attention, like children who argued with their parents all day but clung tightly to their hands at night when darkness fell.
“As yesterday’s scans suggested,” the President continued, her voice holding up well, “the sphere contained two metallic objects. What we did not know yesterday but do know now is that the objects are marked in a deliberate and non-random fashion. The precise meaning of the markings on these two objects — on these two plaques — is as yet undetermined. The scientists involved, including our own representative, have agreed to release high-resolution images of the plaques within the next 48 hours, during which time the analysis will continue in Argentina.”
Between Slater’s sentences, viewers could hear cameras clicking.
“This is all I know right now,” Slater said, “and I knew none of it an hour ago. Whether people believe that is no longer the issue. We will, of course, launch a full investigation into the events surrounding this revelation, but the issue now is how we as a nation react. It is in times of shock and uncertainty that great nations pull together, and I appeal to you all to react in the measured and intelligent way I know we can. I also urge the good people of our media, in the strongest possible terms, to report responsibly.”
Still, those good people of the media were silent.
President Slater placed her hands on top of the bare-bones statement she had received from Argentina and the list of damage limitation lines that Jack Neal had rustled up, finished with both. When she spoke again, her expression was more relaxed and her voice half an octave higher:
“Ladies and gentleman… we may no longer be alone, but we will always be united. Always. May God bless America.”
impact
Private Jet
Milan to Denver
Dan McCarthy covered his eyes with both hands to hide the gathering tears. Something stronger than both joy and relief then pulsed through his body in tangible waves, quickening his breathing and elevating his heart r
ate. It didn’t matter that he had always known it was true; he finally knew he was right to know it.
Clark walked round to the front of Dan’s seat and lifted him up in a brotherly bear-hug.
Emma, still sitting, looked up at them. Her eyes flicked momentarily to the window next to her seat, focusing her mind on the fact that they would soon be landing in a very different world to the one they’d left in Milan; a world changed forever by an incredible truth. It was a truth Dan had been dying to hear since he was a child, but Emma didn’t know how to feel about it on a visceral level. She was happy for Dan and glad to have won by forcing Slater into an admission. But the delay in revealing the content of the messages…
“Bring it in,” Clark said, interrupting her thought.
Emma joined them for the celebratory group hug. “I seriously can’t believe you actually did it,” she spoke into Dan’s ear.
“We did it,” he said. It was true. Emma’s media smarts had been as important as Dan’s initial discovery and her success in bringing it to mainstream audiences had made the victory possible. Deep down, Dan knew that he genuinely couldn’t have done it without her.
“Don’t forget me,” Clark said playfully as they parted. He was talking to Dan. “I’m the one who let her stay. Just saying.”
“We all did it,” Emma said with a broad smile, only half mockingly. “But listen, I might have to write something for when we land, so I better see what Godfrey and everyone has already said.” She motioned towards her seat.
“Do your thing,” Clark said.
The “Choose Feed” option on Blitz News was still there, and it let Emma watch Godfrey’s now finished speech from the beginning as she had hoped.
Not Alone Page 46