“Hmm,” Joe said, this time through confusion. “I haven’t come across any proposals that pro rata funding should—”
“And I want to respond to John Cole’s comments on how the United States has behaved in recent decades,” Richard said, as though Joe hadn’t spoken. “Cole’s little analogy of our “stick” being snapped in half couldn’t illustrate the European glee any greater, but there’s an underlying issue of hypocrisy here. Western Europe has been living in luxury for decades purely because they haven’t had to defend themselves; not with the US standing by. We all know Godfrey has been struggling with cuts to their free healthcare, but everything’s free when you don’t have to protect yourself! The nerve of Cole to use our military spending against us when it’s the foundation of global order…” Richard faded off and shook his head. “Well I’ll tell you this, John: you’re going to miss Pax Americana when it’s gone.”
After a few seconds of silence from Joe, Richard decided it was time to call it a day.
“That’ll do,” he said, keen to keep his interview short enough for people to listen in full. “End on Pax Americana.”
“Okay,” Joe said quietly. He then reverted to his radio voice: “That’s all for this special video edition of Crabbe Shoot Radio. Thanks to our guest, the unrepentant and unapologetic Richard Walker.”
“I will never repent,” Richard said defiantly, projecting his voice to make clear that he wanted this to air. “They can drag me into any kind of kangaroo court they want, but I will never repent. I had two choices, Joe: accept the possibility that our planet might be destroyed by hostile extraterrestrials or an extinction-level asteroid, or accept the inevitability that our nation’s sovereignty definitely would be destroyed by power-hungry globalists. I made the only decision I could.”
“Richard Walker,” Joe repeated.
“They know my name,” Richard said. He closed his laptop and went to bed.
TUESDAY
D plus 11
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Throughout the rest of Monday and into Tuesday, tensions grew.
Emma’s Social Media Meta Analysis app informed her that an overwhelming percentage of Americans wanted a “strong and swift response” from President Slater. The figure rose steadily as time passed and she was nowhere to be seen.
In President Slater’s conspicuous absence, William Godfrey was all over the news both in the US and across western Europe. While the Chinese and Russian publics listened attentively to their own leaders’ appeals for calm and promises of action, Godfrey had already come to be seen as the de facto torchbearer almost everywhere else.
A Blitz News presenter asserted that “William Godfrey is acting like the leader we need”, and on Monday evening the Prime Minister made a less bombastic second statement expressing his view that the world coming together in pursuit of a common goal was as important in an abstract morale-boosting sense as it was in a practical defensive one. Godfrey’s openness about the need to boost morale resonated particularly strongly with an American public sick of being treated like children and kept in the dark by their own government.
Godfrey took the opportunity to clarify his “with or without consensus” comment, explaining that he had already spoken to the leaders of three of the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council about the prospect of developing a “defensive orbital platform of some sort” and that all three shared his view on the urgency of a tangible response. “All I meant about consensus,” he said, as though it was the smallest detail in the world, “was that one nation’s Security Council veto won’t stop the rest of us.”
The second he said it, Emma shared her interpretation of his motive with Dan and Clark. “He knows we can’t say no,” she told them, using “we” in the loosest national sense. “Whatever they’re going to suggest, we can’t say no. If Slater doesn’t say anything today, people are going to be on the streets tomorrow demanding action. And if she calls for a veto, those marches will turn into riots.”
“Maybe,” Dan said.
“There’s no maybe,” Emma replied. “Remember on Focus 20/20 when you said people don’t riot when they’re scared, people riot when they’re angry? That’s true. And right now, people are scared. But if the government for some reason decided to block the other countries’ idea to build some kind of defensive thing, that fear would turn to anger in an instant. Godfrey knows that, he’s just trying to extract every ounce of political capital he can. He wants to look like a hero, and he does.”
Godfrey also stressed the “more than semantic” distinction between a military space station and a defensive one. The only other major point of note in Godfrey’s second statement was that planetary evacuation was off the agenda. Such an option was “utterly impractical and utterly divisive,” he said, knowing full well that even the largest possible ark couldn’t take everyone and that the unchosen would likely sabotage the mission rather than politely wave to the departing few as they invariably did in utopian science fiction.
Joe Crabbe had posted Richard Walker’s interview online in the early afternoon and received millions of hits within minutes. Richard’s attempts to justify his secrecy only entrenched the hatred felt for him, but Dan had expected nothing more or less than the stubbornly unapologetic rant he provided.
What Dan and every other American did expect was a comment from President Slater, but none came.
Late on Monday evening, the world’s attention turned back to Argentina where the international team released their interpretation of the plaques. After a curt confirmation that Hans Kloster’s DNA profile had indeed been detected on each of the plaques, the diplomatically worded statement expressed the whole team’s “regret and disappointment” that certain unnamed leaders — clearly meaning those in London and Moscow — had made hasty proclamations.
Though the team stopped short of speculating on the Messengers’ reason for including a representation of New Kerguelen or of issuing any recommendations on how government should react to the plaques, they stated their “unanimous belief” that the second plaque’s troubling final panel warned of an asteroid impact rather than a hostile return.
Three weeks prior, the threat of a planet-killing asteroid would have been a dream come true for the news networks. But now that aliens were real and hostility was possible, an asteroid warning just wouldn’t cut it. As such, the international team’s statement did little to change the media narrative; the asteroid impact was posited as the best-case scenario and given little discussion time.
By Tuesday morning in Colorado, Emma’s prediction that people would take to the streets in large numbers had come true.
No major marches had taken place on Monday, with social media indicating that a bitter chasm had developed within the loosely defined Now Movement between those categorically opposed to putting any kind of weapons in space and those who demanded protection. Tuesday, though, showed beyond doubt how the general public felt as hundreds of thousands of marchers brought cities across Europe and even China to a standstill under a new banner: Action Now.
A huge mid-afternoon demonstration in London indicated that Prime Minister Godfrey’s appeal for people to keep calm and carry on had fallen on deaf ears. But this gathering, even larger than the anti-Godfrey protest march a few weeks earlier, brought a smile to his face. Though there were no giant pictures of Godfrey or chants of his name as he might have liked, the peaceful but firm nature of the mass call for action gave him hope.
American cities soon followed, with citizens driven by fear and encouraged by the scenes in Europe to make their own voices heard from coast to coast.
A Blitz News reporter in New York walked alongside one of the largest demonstrations and asked one member of the crowd what exactly he wanted the government to do.
“Anything!” the young man said. “That’s their whole job: to protect us.”
Emma’s social media meta analysis app vividly displayed that such views
were common among the overwhelming majority of internet users. “Globalist agenda” was still a trending term some 36 hours after Richard Walker brought it up with Joe Crabbe during an interview in which he used the word “globalist” no fewer than eleven times. But unfortunately for Richard, Emma’s software showed that an unprecedented 98.3% of mentions fell into the “Disapproving/Critical/Satirical” category. If there had ever been a battle for hearts and minds over this issue, Richard had decisively lost it.
On the back of this, Emma told Dan that she still expected President Slater to make a strong comment at any moment. “If I was Jack,” she said, “Slater would already be calling for Walker to be prosecuted and thanking you for exposing his lies.”
Aside from coverage of the global demonstrations, the TV airwaves continued to brim with individuals and organisations trying to pretend that they had seen everything coming. Countless media outlets who had until a few weeks ago mercilessly ridiculed the mere suggestion of extraterrestrial life now positioned themselves as authorities on the subject.
TV evangelists, politicians and scientists in various fields were at it, too, shamelessly whitewashing their histories and proclaiming themselves long-term believers. This process also extended to everyday citizens, many of whose “I always knew there were aliens” claims were quickly shot down by their “no you didn’t” friends and families.
As Tuesday evening arrived, Blitz News welcomed a prominent SETI researcher whose name Dan vaguely recognised. After talking in general terms about recent events for a few minutes, the researcher pointed out that the previous Blitz segment which speculated about a solar-scale disaster was baseless. “The plaque shows us that Earth will be affected,” he said, “whatever affected really means. But Mars and Venus are untouched, so this can’t be anything to do with the sun or a neutron star or anything like that. From where I’m sitting, that leaves us with two real possibilities; and while I understand the “eviction notice” reading, I personally believe that the dashed line indicates a catastrophic asteroid impact.”
The graphics on the screen changed, now showing an artist’s interpretation of screaming citizens watching on as an asteroid approached.
“To me,” the man continued, “it makes more sense that the aliens would warn us about an asteroid than that they would give us hundreds of years to prepare for their own hostile return. But as others have said, we don’t have any sense of their psychology. We still don’t know why they scattered the spheres in the first place. I’ve heard some people suggest they did it because it was unlikely that one nation could covertly recover them all and so we would have to cooperate, but then why scatter them so remotely? Why not just drop one in New York, one in Moscow, one in Beijing, and one in London or Paris? We really can’t pretend to know what they’re thinking. Their entire psychology is, for want of a better word, alien.”
Dan listened attentively. He wanted to believe the asteroid theory — it was far easier to deal with an asteroid than a hostile alien force — but he couldn’t understand why the aliens wouldn’t just divert or destroy the asteroid themselves if they cared enough to warn us about it. They obviously had the capacity to do so, he reasoned.
The SETI researcher then touched on the post-detection protocols which had been laid out by SETI groups long before the IDA leak, but he recognised that none were particularly relevant to the unforeseen manner in which the truth had come to light. At the end of his interview, he encouraged the world’s governments to act as though a large asteroid had already been detected and that a hostile return was a remote but valid possibility. “I’m not against a defensive station,” he said, “but our approach has to be two-pronged. As well as a colossal asteroid, we must prepare for the slim prospect of hostile visitation. In short, we have to do what we can to protect our species and our planet. Orbital platform, defensive station, whatever you want to call it… we need a shield.”
Just minutes later, Billy Kendrick appeared on Blitz News having called in to join the discussion. The presenter promised to get the SETI researcher back in the studio as soon as possible, and sure enough he was back in his seat when Blitz returned from a short commercial break.
Billy, now back at home following his commercially successful but emotionally exhausting ET Weekender, took issue with almost everything that had been discussed. “Knowing where to look for signals has always been half of SETI’s battle,” Billy said as his face belatedly appeared on screen direct from his home office in Charleston. “And whether New Kerguelen is the Messengers’ home world or one that they’ve earmarked for us, we can send an agreed upon message of peace so that—”
“Come on, Billy,” the researcher interrupted. “Gliese 667 Cc, the closest of the candidate planet’s we’ve detected, is almost 24 light years away. You know we don’t have 48 years to wait for a reply.”
From there, the interview segment descended into an argument, with Billy expressing his disappointment at the prevailing narrative of hostility. The researcher tried to stress that he considered the asteroid scenario more likely, but Billy wouldn’t hear it. “We can’t start putting weapons in space,” he said. “It’s madness.” The weapon vs shield distinction was reiterated, but Billy wouldn’t hear that, either.
“Everyone else recognises the need for a reaction, Mr Kendrick,” the Blitz News presenter interjected. “And a defensive station or platform is the—”
“Who’s everyone?” Billy asked. “I’m not part of your everyone. The people I’ve spoken to aren’t part of your everyone. We can invest in anti-asteroid measures without knee-jerking a weapon into orbit. Not everyone wants warmongering governments to start sending military hardware into space.”
The presenter tried to reply: “Everyone with any credibility on this issue has—”
“What about Dan McCarthy?” Billy interrupted again, too worked up by the whole situation to take direct issue with the slight on his own credibility. “Who’s more credible on this than Dan? He won’t go for a space weapon. No way.”
Emma and Clark both focused intently on Dan, waiting for him to say something.
“I’m staying out of it,” he said.
Emma’s eyes narrowed. “But if you weren’t?”
“There’s not even a question,” Dan said. “We have to build a shield.”
WEDNESDAY
D plus 12
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Finally, on Wednesday morning, the news came through that President Slater would break her silence later in the day in a sit-down interview with Marian de Clerk, the longtime host of Focus 20/20.
Until then, news discussions focused on the myriad of options for a defensive station. Arms manufacturers, futurists, and astrophysicists alike came forward with proposals that had been rejected by the IDA during Richard Walker’s lengthy tenure. Some such proposals involved destructive space-based weapons that Richard couldn’t have run with even had he wanted to, but some were for the type of asteroid mitigation he claimed to have supported. Richard was variously described as “obstructive” and “disinterested” in anti-asteroid proposals dating back to the early 1990s.
While these contradictions interested some viewers in a political sense, Blitz News devoted most of their airtime to the more exciting weaponry. When countless modern proposals had been analysed to death, Blitz News turned to older and grander blueprints for “Nazi sun-guns” and “Soviet mega-lasers”. This held Dan’s attention and passed an hour or so, but it was of little relevance.
At 1:30pm, a special report titled “Nukes in Space” recounted the history of high-altitude nuclear explosions. Penny Holmes, the popular scientist, hosted the segment.
A helpful graphic told viewers that the International Space Station orbited Earth at a maximum distance of 270 miles and that the highest known man-made nuclear detonation occurred at an altitude of 335 miles. Penny excitedly recounted the story of this 1.7 kiloton detonation in September 1958, highlighting the incredible progre
ss that had been made in a rapid time; a mere five months earlier, the highest detonation had been at an altitude of just 16 miles. This sudden progress was not by chance, Penny explained, but rather because a tacit moratorium on nuclear tests would come into effect in November 1958. She held this up as an example of what could be achieved when it had to be.
When the moratorium collapsed in September 1961, American tests soon resumed. Penny turned her attention to what she described as the most spectacular such test: Starfish Prime. Detonated successfully in July 1962 at an altitude of 250 miles, Starfish Prime’s 1.4 megaton yield — almost 100 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — made it the single largest man-made nuclear explosion in space.
Starfish Prime’s blast was so powerful, Penny said, that it damaged electrical systems in Hawaii, 900 miles from the launch site, and also caused critical radiation damage to several satellites. When Penny played a declassified video of the test, viewers quickly saw why contemporary reports had described an “atomic rainbow over Honolulu”.
Not Alone Page 52