English was the only language to have had two announcements, but Godfrey didn’t care. If anything, he thought, it was a good thing that Slater had been asked to speak; after all, the difference in both tone and delivery between his statement and Slater’s could only further enhance Godfrey’s already strong position.
Both the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had just confirmed the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms capable of reaching Earth, but they had been very different types of Disclosure: pants-down vs I told you so.
All eight national leaders were given the same translated statement with some wiggle room for a few touches relevant to their country. Slater brought up the IDA, for example, while Godfrey subtly reminded everyone that the UK had already taken the lead by disclosing its own UFO files a week earlier.
After a few minutes of saying nothing and letting everything sink in, Dan and Clark sat back in their own seats and watched their own screens. Clark decided that he wanted to see Godfrey, too, but Dan was more interested in the drive-in.
Dan immediately recognised the angle of the shot: it was the view from Hawker’s Hill. The Blue Dish Network watermark on the picture left him in no doubt who had been smart enough to put a camera up there to get such a great view of the crowd and the screen. There were dozens of reporters and cameras concentrated around the screen, and Dan saw Maria Janzyck front and centre. Trey and Kyle were sitting on the roof of Trey’s van, parked in its usual spot, just taking everything in.
Even with these pictures of the reaction in Birchwood, the luxurious cabin of Timo’s jet felt like an isolation chamber. In the wake of the historic announcement that would shake the planet to its foundations, Dan McCarthy was coasting through the air, somewhere between his world and its stars.
Dan wanted to be home. He wanted to feel the earth shake. He knew he couldn’t, though, so the next best thing was watching other people feel it. With that thought Dan closed his tablet’s TV app and returned to the live stream from Billy Kendrick’s ET Weekender in Myrtle Beach. Emma and Clark were both listening to Godfrey’s speech through their own headphones, so Dan didn’t bother putting his in.
The timing of Slater’s announcement, while not perfect for Dan, was an absolute jackpot for Billy Kendrick. Billy had spent the last decade of his life enduring unparalleled ridicule from all angles, but only he was laughing now.
Dan skipped back ten minutes on the stream then moved slowly forward until the moment of Slater’s announcement. The announcement played on huge inflatable screens dotted around the site, like the kind Emma had considered for the drive-in before Trey talked her out of it. All of the people who had been tailgating and watching bands minutes earlier were now listening to the announcement with rapt attention.
The four words that changed the world — “we are not alone” — brought an immediate and sustained roar that drowned out everything else Slater said.
The live stream had no audio commentary, but Billy employed a director to switch between the site’s many cameras to highlight different areas when notable events were taking place. The feed now cut rapidly from place to place, showing the immediate human reaction to Slater’s earth-shattering announcement; strangers hugged and danced in front of the main stage; Billy Kendrick, resplendent in his Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts and cowboy hat, stood arms aloft with tears in his eyes at the main entrance; tailgaters high-fived and spilled beer with abandon. And from the other side of the clouds, Dan McCarthy smiled down on them all.
* * *
As joyous as the Kendrick scenes were, and as wonderful as the moment was for the 30,000 or so who were gathered in Myrtle Beach, Dan knew that the more important scenes were those on the news stations which would be viewed by most of the 300,000,000 Americans who weren’t.
With that in mind, he returned to his tablet’s TV app and flicked between various news stations.
During the few minutes Dan spent on ACN, he saw an unfamiliar reporter standing at the entrance of a Tasmart megastore in Dallas, looking on as shoppers piled water and batteries and other essential items into their cars. The reporter put on his best negative voice but the glint in his eye gave away his glee at getting the visual he was there for. He went on to use the familiar newsman’s trick of talking about looting and rioting without directly saying that either had occurred.
Dan reflected with frustration that immediately following the greatest moment in human history — a species- and civilisation-redefining moment — the news networks were already fast at work selling fear. He knew that fear was their bread and butter, but for some reason Dan had expected better from ACN. Probably because of how much he’d grown to like Maria and Kyle, he thought.
After ACN, Dan spent a few minutes on Blitz News where the tone was markedly more positive. Sarah Curtis, the Blitz anchor with more faces than a roomful of clocks, praised Dan with words like “tenacious”, “determined”, and “resolute in the face of a political class that quite simply didn’t want to have this discussion.” Dan couldn’t miss the irony of the unacknowledged reality that until a few days ago, the only thing he’d had to be resolute in the face of was Blitz Media’s character assassination and harassment campaign; the “political class” had caused no real problems for Dan until the very recent raid on his home.
Dan continued his tour of news stations from around the world. He knew that people had always predicted a moment like this would bring panic, but the more he thought about it the more he realised that no one had ever really foreseen a moment quite like this.
But still, context was everything. In the two weeks since the initial leak, almost the entire world had come to accept that they were being lied to, with countless citizens and governments demanding Disclosure throughout the second of those two weeks; so much so that the eventual announcement felt more like a victory than a surprise.
Even the fact that ACN’s fearmongering was focused on potential riots and empty shelves rather than the supposed cause of those riots told a story.
Out of pure curiosity, Dan then clicked onto an Italian news network. Despite having no idea what the voices were saying, he got all he needed from the graphic. It was a map, with a dotted line going from Italy to Colorado. A stronger red line lay on top of the dotted line, showing the progress of Dan’s flight. It was, at a rough estimate, 95% of the way there.
“We’re almost home,” he said, loudly enough to catch Emma and Clark’s attention through their headphones. “Italian TV has a map of the flight path and it says—”
“Nineteen minutes,” Emma replied without losing focus.
Clark took his headphones off and leaned out of his seat to face Dan. “The mountains didn’t give it away?” he asked sarcastically.
Dan raised his window’s blind and looked outside. He smiled.
Home.
* * *
As Dan and Emma walked towards the top of the jet’s stairs with Clark right behind them — all three already hearing the crowd that had gathered to greet them on the other side of the airport’s fence — Dan stopped before taking his first step down.
“What happens now?” he asked.
No one answered.
“I don’t just mean right now,” Dan said, suddenly sounding flustered. “Or here. Or to us. I mean everything. Seriously… what’s going to happen?”
Emma raised her eyebrows and turned her palms upwards, shrugging without shrugging. For once, she had no answer.
Clark patted Dan on the back, a harder slap than intended. “Now…” he said, leaving his hand there and giving Dan’s back another two gentler pats.
“Now what?” Dan said, turning impatiently to see Clark.
Clark held his eyes. “I guess we’re gonna find out what the hell we’ve just done.”
Part 5
Disclosure
“All human wisdom
is summed up in these two words:
wait and hope.”
Alexandre Dumas
D plus 1
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
The scene that greeted Dan at the airport in Denver was one of absolute chaos. Fortunately, the police were well prepared for his arrival and did everything necessary to get him safely to his car. It was relatively plain sailing from there, with the car becoming anonymous as soon as Clark hit the highway.
In Birchwood, the roadblocks were back in full effect with each now manned by four local officers rather than two. The drive-in was predictably packed. But when it came into view, Emma less predictably ordered Clark to speed up. No one at the drive-in spotted the car.
Dan didn’t complain.
Having decided against a public appearance, Emma showed Dan the statement she had written during the final stages of their flight home. With his full approval, she then posted it online.
The statement was short and uncontentious, with Dan, in Emma’s words, expressing his “great joy and greater relief” that the truth had finally come out. It called for haste in the plaques’ public revealing and echoed President Slater’s call for a calm and peaceful reaction. On that note, it added that Dan no longer had any desire to be held up as a figurehead in opposition to the nation’s political establishment; Richard Walker was well and truly out of the picture — discredited, wherever he was — and the cover-up was no one else’s doing. Without mentioning her by name, the statement made clear that Dan believed Slater’s plea of ignorance.
Clark, surveying the damage from the raid Slater had ordered just two days earlier, took issue with letting her off so easily. Mr Byrd had done a good job of tidying the place up, but the missing laptop and the muddy footprints in Henry’s room made it hard for Clark to wish anything but personal and professional ruin on Valerie Slater. The one consolation Clark found was that the fish were okay. Mr Byrd had fed them as promised and luckily the federal agents hadn’t damaged the aquarium. Lucky for them, Clark thought to himself.
After wolfing through one of the freshly delivered Houghton’s Home Fresh meals, received and packed away by Mr Byrd, Dan spent most of Friday night sitting out on the back decking. His mind was surprisingly and refreshingly clear, like eyes blinded by too much light. For the first time since he found the folder, and at the least likely of all moments, Dan found himself thinking about nothing.
Emma joined him outside after a while. She respected the silence for a few minutes, taking in the rickety toolshed and the small area of overgrown paving that looked more like grass with patches of concrete than concrete with patches of grass.
“All the news is pretty upbeat,” she eventually told him. “People are more excited than scared.”
Dan nodded, too many times. His mind was somewhere else. “I thought there would be helicopters above the house and news guys bursting through the roadblocks to harass us,” he said, like Emma hadn’t even spoken. He looked up from the nothing he had been staring at and turned to her. “Do you think it’s maybe a little too quiet?”
“Aliens are real,” Emma said.
“I know, but—”
“That’s the story. That is the story. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not the story anymore. You’re just the guy who got the ball rolling.” She clicked her fingers then moved her hand horizontally in a quick “just like that” motion.
“You think?” Dan said, genuinely asking.
“Yeah. It’s like… I know you don’t believe the whole JFK thing is real or whatever, but—”
“It’s obviously real,” Dan interrupted. “I just don’t accept the official—”
“That’s not the point,” Emma cut him off, returning the favour. “What I was going to say is: people used to talk about remembering where they were when JFK was killed. Okay? No one ever talked about remembering where they were when Oswald killed JFK. Because the story was the President being shot. Even though Oswald was the guy who actually took the action and made the big thing happen, the story was that the big thing happened. Do you know what I mean?”
Dan nodded, quietly hopeful that she was right. Attaining celebrity had never been part of his plan, whether people believed that or not.
“Your old life is over, though,” Emma added, very abruptly. “You can’t go back to working at the coffee—”
“It’s a bookstore.”
“At the bookstore,” Emma grinned. “Because even though you’re not going to be the focus of everything like you have been these last two weeks, the media are still going to treat your life like it’s public property. That’s just what they do. But it’s not like you have to keep going to the drive-in every day or talking on TV. You won’t have to do any active media work at all if you don’t want to.”
Dan took in everything Emma said. He hadn’t been holding out much hope that his life would go back to normal, but if that was the price of Disclosure then it was a price worth paying a thousand times over.
“Except for those ads you promised me,” Emma added in her chirpiest XPR-era tone. She stood up and ruffled Dan’s hair like an annoying big sister before walking back inside. “Don’t think I forgot about them, Dan McCarthy.”
“My fingers were crossed when I made that promise,” he jokingly called after her. He turned to see Emma’s middle fingers raised in reply.
“You should come inside and see what’s happening everywhere,” she said more seriously. “After all, you’re the guy who pushed the ball down the hill. Might as well see where it’s rolling…”
SATURDAY
D plus 2
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
As Friday night faded into Saturday morning, Dan quickly saw that Emma was right about the media focus shifting from him to the real story. He stayed awake all night with both Emma and Clark, drinking cup after cup of sugar-loaded instant coffee.
Clark abstained from the coffee and complained that he wouldn’t sleep anyway since his body clock was still “all messed up” from the time difference; as always seemed to be the case, he had just finished adjusting to the new time zone in Italy when it came time to leave and he now had to do it all over again. He sat in his armchair, half-focused on the TV.
So much was happening that the news networks didn’t know what to focus on. The most visually symbolic scenes came from Billy Kendrick’s ET Weekender in Myrtle Beach, but by midnight they had been played to death.
Blitz News and ACN both devoted a lot of airtime to their foreign correspondents in cities around the world and the story was always similar: there were small spontaneous gatherings of excited citizens honking horns and playing music, but most people were just getting on with their lives at home or at work. It would soon become clear that most of them were watching the news with the same rapt attention as Dan, breaking viewing records on news networks everywhere.
One thing missing from any city was the kind of mass panic that would have been prevalent in an invasion scenario and might have occurred had the Disclosure announcement come out of the blue. But by accident rather than design, Dan’s initial leak and the subsequent drip-by-drip revelations had almost been akin to boiling a frog; no one had been suddenly dropped into a reality where aliens existed, so the eventual confirmation wasn’t a fatal shock to the system. The plaques were yet to be publicly revealed, of course, and Dan quietly hoped that this one final revelation wouldn’t raise the temperature any further.
The counterpoint to this welcome lack of panic was that, from where Dan was sitting, the global reaction lacked the sense of wonder and awe that might well have been equally widespread if the announcement had come out of the blue.
Dan reflected that the Kloster letter had perhaps spoiled the surprise, but he knew that without it the Argentine government wouldn’t have started searching for the sphere; meaning that either the truth would have remained at the bottom of the ocean or, worse, that Richard Walker might have acted with urgency and launched his own covert recovery mission.
If this was a trade-off, Dan was
happy to make it. But while mundane was far too strong a word, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that the excitement levels were a few notches lower than they should have been.
Maybe everyone is catching their breath before the plaques come out, he thought. Yeah. That’s it.
D plus 3
10 Downing Street
London, England
When Big Ben chimed to signal noon in London, things changed.
For while President Slater’s appeal for a calm and peaceful reaction had largely succeeded in maintaining order and quelling anger at home, there was one man on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean who refused to let her off so easily.
Prime Minister Godfrey stepped outside Number Ten at the turn of the hour with an unusually well-groomed John Cole by his side. Godfrey spoke for a few minutes about how proud he was that the international team he proposed had succeeded in opening the Kerguelen sphere and confirming its extraterrestrial origin.
He stressed that he and other national leaders genuinely hadn’t yet seen the two plaques but told the world there was no danger of the truth being suppressed given that so many countries were represented on the team. Dan nodded at home, having said something very similar himself.
“But I can’t insult your intelligence by ignoring the elephant in the room,” Godfrey continued, focusing his sights. “Or perhaps I should say the two elephants in the room. I speak, of course, of Richard Walker and Valerie Slater.”
“I literally cannot believe he’s doing this,” Emma said. Dan shushed her. Clark sat up straight.
Back in London, John Cole didn’t even try to hide his snakelike grin.
Not Alone Page 47