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by Al Macy

  The craft reached the South Pole, made its second impossibly abrupt turn, and zipped up the seventy-fourth longitude line to New York City, starting a gradual descent when it passed Venezuela.

  Marie Keller looked out toward the sunset from the eighty-sixth floor observation deck of the Empire State Building. Beautiful! She wore one of her trademark Irish sweaters and was on her annual trip to New York City. Earl, her second husband—because he was twenty years younger than she is, she called him her trophy husband—was stuck listening to Madge’s blather. Not that he was understanding her; Earl suffered from an early-onset dementia. Madge’s husband stood next to Marie, quietly appreciating the view.

  It took the sphere less than one second to travel from the southern tip of Manhattan island to the Empire State Building. Marie flinched as if someone had kicked a soccer ball right at her face. A huge, fast soccer ball with a vapor trail strung out behind it.

  The sphere stopped at the tip of the Empire State Building. The tourists freaked. They mobbed the exits and looked like they were watching a vertical tennis match. Eyes to the sphere, eyes to the exits, push, and repeat. Marie picked out Madge’s screams, “Marie, come on we have to get out of here that thing could explode and it’s probably radioactive and we’re all going to die.” She frantically motioned for Marie join the group. Marie just smiled, nodded, and waved, trying to convey, “You guys go ahead, I’m fine. I’ll be along later.” She had a front row seat to the biggest event in all history—no way was she going to leave. Had she been able to touch it, she would have.

  It maintained a precise position alongside the building’s antenna. The sphere was about thirty feet across and resembled a gray golf ball but with hundreds of protrusions arranged like tiny blocks in a crowded city. The protrusions came and went, and sometimes the entire surface of the sphere was smooth. When that happened, Marie waved and picked out her reflection in the mirror-like surface.

  The scent of ozone filled the air. A flying-saucer noise—the same throbbing woo-woo-woo used in old science fiction movies—came from the spacecraft. It was just loud enough to be heard over the screams of the tourists.

  Maybe the radiation will keep my breast cancer from coming back.

  * * *

  June 3

  Charli sat alone in the Ruby Mountain situation room, tapping her pen on her legal pad and watching the media coverage of the sphere. Now what’s going to happen?

  An adventurous tom-boy while growing up in rural Maine, she had been “one of the guys” until puberty. When the other boys started initiating fights just so they could wrestle her, it was time for a change. But even as a teenager, her choice of courses such as auto shop, math, and science, demonstrated her independent thinking.

  She looked at the image of the sphere on the room’s screen. After arrival, the craft just sat there making its silly throbbing sounds.

  On CNC, news anchor Kendel Cole appeared on the left side of a split screen. “Today we are talking with Seth McGraw, President Hallstrom’s chief science adviser, and the former CEO of the SETI Institute. SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Dr. McGraw is speaking to us from the Ruby Mountain bunker, where he has been working closely with the president in the four days since the sphere reached our planet.”

  Charli got up and walked two doors down to the media room where McGraw sat in front of the camera. The red light was on over the door, but she snuck in quietly and leaned against the back wall.

  “Thank you for talking with us today, Dr. McGraw.”

  “Happy to be here … or to be talking with you.” McGraw licked his lips. Charli gave him a thumbs up and a wink even though he probably couldn’t see her. Most of the room was dark, with cables running along the cement floor.

  “Dr. McGraw, what’s inside that sphere?”

  “We, ah, don’t know, of course, but there are two possibilities that I can think of. First, it’s totally mechanical—that is, it’s a drone, with no biological beings inside it. NASA discovered a while ago that it’s a lot easier and cheaper to send a mechanical device to another planet than it is to send people. So this sphere could be analogous to one of our Mars rover units.” McGraw’s speech smoothed out once he began talking about his passion.

  “There are few creatures on Earth that could survive the kinds of decelerations we’ve observed. But of course, if there is a biological being in there, it will be unlike any creature on Earth.” He paused here, as if picturing a totally alien being.

  “In addition, since we know the craft is far more advanced than anything humans have created, perhaps it has properties that eliminate the G forces on the inside. My scientists tell me that’s impossible, but the craft did travel at Mach twenty without generating any sonic booms.” Another pause, this time to take a sip of water. “Could there be one or more sentient beings inside that craft? Yes, all right, it’s entirely possible, but I see it as the less-likely alternative.”

  At this point Kendel Cole put his finger to his earpiece in the international I’m-getting-a-message gesture, and said “Dr. McGraw I’m going to have to interrupt you here, because apparently something is happening. We have a television signal being broadcast from the sphere itself. If we can—”

  Charli pushed off from the wall and motioned to McGraw, who pulled off his microphone and made his way through the maze of lights, microphones, and monitors. They hurried back to the situation room just as Hallstrom and Young arrived. Guccio wasn’t far behind. Charli dropped into a blue-fabric swivel chair while keeping her eyes on the screen. Most of the room was antiseptic-gray, but the ribbon mahogany conference table would have been at home in any high-end office suite.

  A 1950s-style test pattern, the one with the Indian chief on it, abruptly replaced Cole on the monitors. This happened for all stations around the world, and most of the inhabitants of Earth were now glued to their sets, anticipating what was sure to be humans’ first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.

  When the test pattern disappeared, replaced by the set for the CBS Evening News, Charli turned to Hallstrom and said, “Well, so much for that, I guess there was no transmission after all.” But when she looked back to the screen, Walter Cronkite was sitting at the anchor desk. What?

  The real Walter Cronkite, the one who anchored the CBS news for nineteen years, the one known as the most trusted man in America, had died in 2009. This Walter Cronkite, whether it was a hologram, an illusion, or something else, sat calmly looking over his papers and adjusting his earpiece. He wore the same heavy-framed glasses seen at the announcement of the death of President Kennedy. He wore not a business suit, but a faded I-Heart-NY T-shirt with a name tag that read “Hello my name is” with “Walter” written in with blue marker pen.

  Guccio said, to no one, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Charli looked at him then back to the screen.

  Cronkite put the papers down, took off his glasses, and spoke.

  “Greetings, people of Earth.” He, or it, had Cronkite’s voice.

  “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I am here. I am here to help you. Think of me as Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. But I have to tell you people, this witch of the …” He put his glasses back on and consulted his notes. “… North, wasn’t really that good, right? I mean, if Glinda wanted to help Dorothy, she would have said, ‘Look girlfriend, this is all a goddamned dream, ‘cause you got knocked on the head during a tornado, so you best just wake the fuck up!’” Cronkite was speaking faster now, and he yelled the last four words.

  Charli was too young to have seen Cronkite’s news broadcasts but was familiar with his later reporting and news specials. Hearing him swear and yell was almost as shocking as seeing him alive again. And the concept of an alien intelligence spouting a semi-delirious tirade about a seventy-year-old movie … it was just too much. Everybody stayed silent, not wanting to miss a word. The president put his hands on the sides of his head.


  Walter Cronkite continued. “Instead, Glinda puts the red shoes on Dorothy, making her a target of the bad witch, then sends Dorothy on this wild goose chase to find a wizard who isn’t a wizard, and even at the end of the movie, when Dorothy finally wakes up, nothing is resolved, right? The mean lady down the road is still going to put the little black dog to sleep.

  “So, people, I’m concerned that you humans just don’t, fucking, pay, attention.” Here he stopped and looked into the camera for ten seconds.

  Hallstrom said, “This can’t be happening. What is going on?”

  “Let me give you another example.” Cronkite continued, “You’ve got, what,” again checking his notes, “jeez, 7.5 billion people on this planet? What the hell were you thinking? I know what you were thinking.” Here his voice changed to that of a California valley girl. He held his hands up and flopped them around with limp wrists. “ ‘It would be, like, so awesome, you know, to, like, have a cute little girl to sit on my lap while I, like, watch Wheel of Fortune.’”

  The voice wasn’t that of a man imitating a valley girl accent. It was a perfect valley girl voice, but coming out of Walter Cronkite’s mouth. He went back to his normal news-anchor voice. “So now you have, what, 7.5 billion people on a planet that should have a population of,” he looked down at his notes, “two-point-one billion people. So I’m telling you now. Wake up!” Another ten-second pause while he removed his glasses and glared directly at the camera.

  Visibly calmer, he continued. “Okay, so here is the bad news: The Wicked Witch of the West is coming. Of course I don’t mean the actual witch of the West, since she’s just a character in a book slash movie,” and here Cronkite made a slashing movement with his hand, “I’m just using her as an analogy so you will understand. Got it?

  “Here are some other analogies for you: The Borg, Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan. Got it?

  “In other words, the Bad Guys are coming. The Bad Guys are a civilization of warlike beings that do bad things to unprotected planets like yours. For right now, let me just say, ‘You don’t want to know.’

  “My Mission Impossible is to travel around helping underdogs like you. In this case, I have to say ‘Mission Freaking Impossible,’ but I’m going to give it my best shot.

  “That is all for now. I have to let you folks process this.” He said the word “process” in an exaggerated, mocking way, and made little bunny rabbit quote marks with his fingers. “But I’ll be back,” (perfect Schwarzenegger accent), “to help. I’ve uploaded some plans for devices that could be of assistance. You’ll find them on WikiLeaks.org.”

  The camera moved in closer.

  “And one more thing,” he paused dramatically and then threw his arms out and yelled,

  “Live from New York, It’s Saturday Niiiiiiii-ght!”

  The screen cut to black, and the sphere shot off into space.

  CHAPTER SIX

  June 4, 2018

  The trillions of nanobot spores that had streamed from the sphere floated in the upper regions of the troposphere, far above the unwitting occupants of Earth. Had the spores been able to see, they would have looked down on a world conducting business as usual. The sneeze and pain episode and the Cronkite broadcast were on everyone’s lips. No one had any idea that above, an invisible air force was migrating toward them.

  Winds carried some of the spores higher, some lower, but all would sink to the planet’s surface in time to carry out their mission. They were not in a rush.

  * * *

  Eight miles below the spore layer, deep in the Ruby Mountain bunker, the post-broadcast discussion began. Charli had her notes lined up, just the way she liked them. So I like things neat. There are worse vices to have.

  The bunker’s situation room was less plush than its White House counterpart. A lingering paint smell reminded her how recently the facility had been completed.

  President Hallstrom stood at the front of the room with his arms crossed. He wore a short-sleeved business shirt that revealed the results of his once-a-week strength-training sessions.

  He’d once said that only a mentally disturbed megalomaniac could run for president and that a non-politician like him could never be elected. He then proved himself wrong by entering the race and winning a handy victory.

  Charli watched Hallstrom. Three characteristics were important when it came to being president: phenomenal people skills, a flair for delegating, and a razor-sharp intelligence. Hallstrom had the first two. With his snow-white hair and ready smile, his charisma was irresistible; everyone loved him. He surrounded himself with the brightest advisers and delegated his authority to them. As for intelligence, there was nothing wrong with his intellect. He just wasn’t the quickest bunny in the forest.

  “Okay,” he said, “let’s go around the table. Quick first impressions, starting with Gordon.”

  Guccio twiddled a pen between his fingers. “It’s obviously a bad situation: A wacky alien with technology that’s far superior to our own. And if he’s telling the truth about the bad witch scenario, he’s not even our worst problem.”

  “Okay. Maddix?”

  “I agree. I wish I could see something hopeful here, but I don’t.” Maddix was the only one wearing a suit and tie. “If the alien, I’m guessing everyone will call him Cronkite, had been calm and trustworthy then we’d only have this ominous bad witch prediction to worry about. As it is we have to figure out whether Cronkite is insane, and whether he is telling the truth about the bad witch. Even if Cronkite is benevolent, he might do us more harm than good. But … the whole thing is just crazy. Cronkite’s right about one thing. This is something we’re going to have to ‘process.’”

  “What about you, Seth?”

  “I will happily leave the political aspects of this to you people. As for the science and technology side, let me say this: for centuries we’ve been asking whether we’re alone in the universe. Now we know the answer: we are not alone. That’s a pretty significant thing to learn. We should celebrate that.”

  Guccio twirled his index finger. “Yay.”

  McGraw frowned at him. “Well, we should. On a more practical note, I’ve gotten a text telling me that Cronkite has indeed uploaded something to WikiLeaks. So, we may soon be the recipients of some technology that’s far advanced beyond our own.”

  “Do you now think there is a creature in that sphere?” asked Charli.

  McGraw nodded. “Well, with the caveat that it may be a creature with some kind of machine intelligence, yes, I do think there is some sentient being inside. That is, I now think it less likely that we are just dealing with a probe or a drone.”

  “I guess it’s hard to imagine a computer ranting about relative merits of advice from Glinda the good witch.” Young took a sip of coffee.

  “Exactly,” Guccio said. “The image I’m getting now is some fat alien lounging in a spherical spaceship, drinking a beer, watching The Wizard of Oz on TV, and yelling obscenities at the screen. I think I’d prefer a computer.”

  “Seth,” Hallstrom said, “what about the image of Walter Cronkite? What’s that all about?”

  “First, it shows that the alien has access to our old TV broadcasts. Either his civilization collected them as they leaked out into space, or he’s accessed our archives somehow. The former suggests they’ve been watching us for a while.”

  “What about seeing Walter Cronkite talking instead of some alien creature?” The president checked off something on his pad.

  “That’s an easier one.” McGraw put his pencil down. “We have apps that can create a realistic cartoon and animate it to say or do whatever we enter. With a much more advanced version of that, Cronkite’s broadcast would not be hard to create. That is, just animate a cartoon of Walter Cronkite and add in the words.”

  Charli said, “Psychologically, maybe he figured it would be traumatic enough for us to get a broadcast from an alien, and by choosing a human form to display, the broadcast would be less shocking.”

  “And h
e was so careful to speak calmly and not to say anything upsetting.” Young was drawing spacecrafts on his pad.

  “Good point. Maybe he had good intentions but got carried away.” Charli looked around the room. “Which brings us to the most important question—”

  “Is he crazy?” Hallstrom finished her thought.

  “Exactly,” Charli said. “My feeling is that he’s impetuous, impulsive, and … fervid, but hopefully, not crazy.”

  “There she goes with those fancy prep school words again.” Guccio made Stevie Wonder motions with his head.

  “Should we bring in some psychologists?” asked the president.

  “Find some that have worked closely with extraterrestrials.” Young looked up. “Oh, wait a second …”

  “Again, good point, but it wouldn’t hurt to get some opinions from experts on earth-man psychology. I’ll set that up,” Charli said.

  Charli had never intended to get into politics. She had an aptitude for science and math from an early age, skipped two grades, and entered MIT at the age of fifteen. She graduated three years later with a minor in political science. That’s impressive unless compared with Alia Sabur, who went directly from fourth grade to college and graduated suma cum laude at age fourteen.

  Charli caught the attention of a state senator at a Massachusetts science and government event. The senator convinced Charli to become a political intern, and she later ended up working on one of Hallstrom’s campaigns.

  “Is there anyone here who believes that Cronkite is on our side?” The president looked around the room but didn’t see any definitive gestures. “Anyone believe the bad witch is coming?”

  Charli shook her head. “I just don’t feel we have enough to go on. Even if his presentation hadn’t been over the top, I’d be skeptical. But there is something I’m pretty sure of.” She paused. “If Cronkite has the technology to wipe us out, and I suspect he does, the continued existence of the human race may depend on how we interact with him.”