by Tobias Roote
Unusually, he was not planning on running for a second term. His first had been bad enough. He’d had no idea the difficulties of being the Head of State of the USA would hamstring him so effectively. He wanted to achieve so much, but because of the politics, the favours owed, allegiances and strength of lobbyists, there was no room for his own personal agendas. As a result, he was feeling disenchanted with everything. It wasn’t what he’d promised himself at the start of his campaign. Now, he was lucky if he even had a moment to think about the promises he had made himself. The desire to contribute in some way to world peace, brokering deals that would lead to disarmament, lowering of world tensions. All seemed so achievable then. Now, it was a distant memory of a fading dream, one removed from reality. A wisp of intent.
He placed the report on the threat of China’s continued economic growth forecast down, for the third time in an hour. It was hard reading. The US was so far in debt to the Chinese banks and corporations, in other words, the government, that the USA was effectively owned lock, stock and barrel by Peking. The American people would revolt if they knew the extent of the indebtedness to a known enemy. How had it come to this ?
If the Chinese wanted to foreclose tomorrow, there was damn all the government could do, except declare war. It left him with no room for manoeuvre, and the report itself left him with a very bad taste. One that had been inherited from his predecessor. A bad deal put at the end of his term and passed on with a smirk being the only clue to the poisoned chalice.
A rustling made him look up at the door and he wondered which secret agent had entered his sanctum to disturb his peace, but there was nobody there.
“There is a way out of the predicament, Mr President.” A voice came from across the room.
“Whoa ! Who’s that ?” He dropped the report across the floor as he shot out of his seat in surprise. Then fell back into it when he realised with a shock that he had an intruder in the room that had bypassed his security. How the dickens had he done that ?
The man appeared out of the dark shadows in the corner of his private suite and walked slowly towards him. He sat down opposite the President on the long backed green leather chesterfield, that had occupied that spot for the last two hundred years. He was bald, with chiselled features and competent looking. Plainly American from his introductory speech, he was dressed in a one piece tunic of dark grey. His complexion was one of rude health and lightly tanned, as though he had recently had a holiday in Hawaii. He was relaxed, perfectly at ease with infiltrating the inner sanctum. Legs crossed, he leaned back relishing the comfort of the leather, as though it was something he had grown fond of and now missed. He then leaned forward, ready to explain.
President Garner, initially dumbfounded, had been too surprised to even reach for his panic button. Now though his attention turned to the table.
“Don't worry, it won’t work anyway, Mr President,” the man said as the President’s hand moved towards the small hand control that would call in his security team with guns unholstered, safety off and aiming to shoot first, explanations second.
The President pressed it anyway and waited for the doors to burst open, ready to duck under the coffee table at the first opportunity, as he had been taught. Even the body sensors should have picked up the intruder’s presence, but hadn’t.
Nothing happened.
You don’t get to be President by being stupid, and Garner could see the man wasn’t armed, had not approached him aggressively and showed no threat or hostility towards him. He gauged his need to respond in panic mode and assessed correctly that, currently, there was no threat, only an unexplained entrance into his private chamber. Someone’s head would roll for that, once this little episode had run its course.
In the meantime, he decided to humour the man until his sleeping security team awoke to the fact that he wasn’t alone.
“Who are you ? What do you want ? Why are you in my private suite ? And, just how the fuck did you get past my secret service team out there ?” he snapped.
“Firstly, my name is Zeke Callaghan and I’m not here to harm you. I appreciate you have a lot of questions, Mr President, so, if you would allow me, I would like to show you something that might help get you and me off on the right foot, so to speak,” Zeke offered quietly.
The President stood, as if to move towards the door and spoke very loudly.
“I cannot see anything in your hands. You aren’t wearing a jacket and you don’t have a briefcase. What could you possibly have to show me that would stop me from having you thrown into chains, ten levels below the Hoover building, where the sun never shines ?” President Garner bluffed, speaking loud enough to wake the dead in the next State, but frustrated by the lack of response from his men outside the door.
Zeke just smiled at him.
“Oh, it’s not here, Mr President, it’s somewhere we are going to visit.”
Zeke then walked up close to the President who tried to step back, but was restrained by Zeke’s holding onto his arm with an iron-clad grip.
Zeke issued a command to the empty air.
“Ship ? Now please !”
Before the President could respond, he felt a tingling sensation over the whole of his body. It stymied his intended outburst as both of them were enveloped in a D-field that, in microseconds, removed them from the room.
Two seconds later, two black-suited agents burst in, guns drawn looking for the President.
“I heard voices, Blayne. I tell you, he was talking to someone and I heard the other guy’s voice, like he was in the room.” The first agent was the smaller and skinnier of the two, his name badge said Riley.
“Where's the President ?” the one called Blayne shouted, weaving his gun around the room in an effort to home in on a target. Any target.
“He was here, I spoke to him as he entered just over ninety minutes ago, he hasn’t come out,” Riley responded, panic beginning to set in. They had lost the President on their watch. What happened now would depend on where the President had gone. Either way, Riley knew his career was in the sewer.
Blayne, equally despairing, pressed his throat mike and went to call out an all points alert.
“White Stag is missing,” he croaked into the mike, choking back the disbelief that they had just lost the President.
- 14 -
President Garner reeled reacting badly to the unexpected change in his location. The floor, surroundings and air pressure, all made him disoriented. He had no previous concept of a ‘de-materialisation’ field for relocating a body, so he naturally responded in a highly negative way. He swore like a trooper.
“Fuck ! Fuck ! Fuck !” he exclaimed, as his brain attempted to readjust his perception to a completely different locale.
He struggled to balance ; his weight distribution felt wrong, which caused him to weave like a drunk as he tried to coordinate his body to this new physical experience. His mind refused to cooperate with the reality of his situation so he floundered until he found a chair back near him to cling on to.
He used its stability as an anchor while he came to terms with what the hell had just happened.
No longer in his darkened lounge, the temperature change alone, caused him to awaken to the idea he was some place else. The even light distribution gave him a sense of timelessness as if he had entered a period of perpetual daytime. In a sense he wasn’t far off the mark. He belatedly took in the greyness of his surroundings, as well as the lack of rich textures that his mind had been accustomed to thiry seconds prior.
Opposite him, in exactly the same position as in his lounge, stood the stranger, looking taller now in the clear light.
Garner could see intense alertness in the eyes. He could tell the man was services-trained, purely from the stance and attitude, his own background was of a similar nature. Was he dealing with military, ex-forces, or home-grown terrorists ? His imagination was racing overtime in the absence of explanations and left him clutching at straws.
The stranger re- introduced himself.
“Mr President, my name is Zeke Callaghan. Your people will be able to check me out properly when we send you back, and you will be going back soon, Mr President,” he reassured him politely. Then he proceeded to expand on his promise.
“You are not a prisoner, or hostage. You are simply a visitor that we need to talk to and the best way of getting your attention, was to bring you here.” Zeke’s hands spread outwards to indicate the ‘here’ he was talking about was this small grey room with only the single operational chair to provide him with the ability to remain upright.
Garner wasn’t ready to concede anything to this man yet. He went to step back to put distance between them and instead came up against the hard surface of the wall behind him. He panicked sparking off a torrent of questions.
“Where the hell am I ? What did you just do to me and what the hell do you mean by kidnapping me ?” He wagged his finger threateningly, but wisely took back a hold of the chair while he dealt with the renewed vertigo he was experiencing. With everything that was going on, his mind wasn’t prepared for Zeke’s answer.
“Currently, you are in a small alien spacecraft above the North Pole,” Zeke responded calmly.
“Haha err ! You’re kidding, right ?” Garner responded nervously. His colour had gone from red, to puce to whitish grey in a matter of seconds and Zeke became concerned in case the President passed out. He could see that Garner wasn’t really taking it in yet. He could well understand the idea of blanking something totally unbelievable until the mind could either cope with it, or was not given a choice.
Garner chose to verbally attack Zeke in an effort to ignore the obvious ; that he truly was on an alien spaceship in space, and certainly not where he wanted to be right now.
“Do you know the penalty for kidnapping the President of the United States of America ?” President Garner ranted while trying hard to get a grip of himself, but only succeeding in sounding cowardly and weak. He was plainly rattled and ran off the warning without thinking of the insanity of threatening someone who could ‘instantly’ remove him from his office under the very nose of his security detail.
“As I said back on Earth, Mr President, it might be easier to just show you,” Zeke offered in as calming a manner as possible because he wasn’t sure it would be seen as such in a few seconds. He offered the President a brown paper bag he had leftover from a Big Mac that Ship had sequestered earlier and prepared for the verbal onslaught the next move would bring from the formidable man standing in front of him.
“You might need this, Mr President,” said Zeke not responding to the threat, while handing him the bag.
“A barf bag, are you kidding me ? um ! Callaghan did you say your name was ?”
“Yes, Mr President. If you would like just to watch this wall here for a second ?” he indicated the blank wall in front of them.
“Ship, porthole planet-side, please,” he commanded.
“Affirmative,” confirmed Ship.
No sooner had the President craned his neck around to work out where the voice was coming from, there was a new distraction forming right in front of him and he was pulled into more mental chaos.
It didn’t seem to take as long to create the porthole this time, as Zeke’s earlier introduction to space vistas had. Maybe Ship was getting faster. Canada, Russia and the northern part of the USA were mostly in darkness, cloud covered much of the eastern side and mid country was getting a thunder storm or two.
Zeke’s attention was drawn back into the ship, by the sound of a bag rustling, as the President lost his dinner.
The President desperately held onto the chair with one hand, much as Zeke had done the first time. He watched as the President’s eyes bulged at the unfolding view. It was, perhaps, a cruel thing to do, but as Zeke had personally experienced it himself, he reminded himself that ‘it beat all the argumentative crap right out of you’.
“As you can see, Mr President, we are currently stationed just over the North Pole. You can see Canada, Russia,“ he pointed, “and, if you look down there, you can just make out Washington on the edge there, where we just removed you from.”
Garner looked at Zeke as if he felt there was a debt owed and it wasn’t a pleasant look, but despite himself, President Garner was mesmerised. Only a few select people got to see the view of the world from here for real. His eyes couldn’t pull away from the scene unfolding before him. He’d seen enough ISIS pictures to be surprised at the viewpoint. However, the clarity and the depth of focus of the image he was seeing was breathtaking. He held out from being impressed ; still riled at the method of his abduction. He was more than prepared to have this man shot on the White House lawn.
“You could easily be faking this, Callaghan, I don’t know how you are doing it, but I’m sure as hell not going to be convinced of anything by a little bitty demonstration like this. Where are we ? In a 3D trailer-park in back of the White House ?”
Zeke just smiled and seeing it, Garner felt a black pit open up in his gut.
“Ship, can you reposition us alongside the Space Station, please. Remain cloaked.”
“Affirmative, Zeke.”
A few seconds later, the view changed and they were port side, viewing a shining combination of unfurled gossamer wings and mismatched washing machine drums, all combined into a familiar shape known the world over. Behind it, the Earth shone bright as a button, as the sun’s reflection slid across Ireland and western Spain, bringing early morning to Europe.
The President was now completely lost in the view and it was some minutes before either of them could bring themselves to pull away from it and focus on the inside of the ship.
“Ship, close porthole,” Zeke commanded.
The view slid from sight as it was replaced with the grey of the wall, as if it never existed.
Garner walked to the wall, still clutching the brown bag, and felt along it looking for something, then, hand still on the wall, turned to Zeke.
“How did you do that ? It looked so real ?” he asked incredulously.
“That’s because it was real,” confirmed Zirkos as he walked into the control room from his quarters, having kept out of the way until the show had concluded.
Now Garner was astonished. He had just got used to the idea that he was dealing with an extraordinary human being that could spirit him out of the White House past all of his security and into space, talk to a spaceship, look at Earth through a porthole that just appeared ‘on demand’, when to top it all off, an alien walks in.
Silver-skinned Zirkos had timed his entrance perfectly, and he walked up to the President and offered his hand.
“Mr President, my name is Zirkos, and I come from another universe. Can we please talk ?” Zirkos indicated the next room where Zeke was already heading.
Garner followed, completely speechless, and much like Zeke before him, meekly now, all previous bluster and pretentiousness gone out the porthole.
- 15 -
President Garner sat in the oval office where he had been returned not ten minutes earlier by the same means he had been secreted away. Never a true believer in himself as a master of his own destiny let alone the world’s, Frank Garner had been shown a future where Earth had shaken off the mantle of oppression and embraced technology in a way that had never been conceived of before. He was excited, but also daunted by the immensity of the project that the two oddball entrepeneurs had proposed. Could they make the future happen ? He didn’t know, but he wouldn’t stand idly by and watch them go it alone.
Now, he had decisions to make, and the first one was going to be how to explain his disappearance from his lounge four hours ago. He had no means of leaving the room without his security detail being aware, yet it was important that they not be aware of his visit to outer space, not yet, maybe not ever.
He would be carted off to dementia land and the vile VP Dredge would take his place. That damned man had
proven to be a venomous viper in the pit and thwarted his efforts to move forward on anything substantial. Garner knew why of course, Dredge wanted him to fail and then step into his shoes. This would be all he needed to cudgel power from the office of the President.
Garner was about to press the intercom to call in his secretary, when the door burst open and she ran in ahead of two security officers looking very upset. When she saw him at his desk her relief was evident. The agents that had entered with her looked relieved, but bewildered. One tagged his wrist and issued a terse command.
“This is Packer, White Stag is found. Repeat, White Stag is found. Stand down perimeter search. Resume stations. Out.”
Special Agent Packer, his Secret Service, Head of Detail, was the first to quiz him.
“Where have you been, Sir ? We have been hunting all over for you ?”
“I took a walk. I had read too much of the papers I had and just took a walk. It’s no big deal, nobody noticed me. I intended to be just be a few minutes, but was away longer and just found my way to my office without thinking about it,” Garner said dismissively, trying hard to keep his voice sounding casual.
“Sir, there’s no way...” Packer wasn’t allowed to finish.
“Has anybody here got a damned cigarette ?” Garner bellowed in an effort to change the subject.
“Sir, Mr President, you can’t...” his secretary pleaded.
“Yes, Yes ! I know. Just get me a coffee please, Annie. It’s been a long night.” He turned to his security detail.
“Gentlemen,” the President indicated the door. “Really, all is well, I just went off the radar for a few hours, that’s all.”
Packer turned to him as he was leaving, scowling vehemently. He knew that his team had been diligent and thorough, yet the president had got past them all without apparent effort. He was going to be looking into just how the President could disappear into thin air and when he did...
The President read the look on his face and nodded in acceptance of Packer’s implied threat in the scowl. He regretted the need to lie and dissemble, but now was not the time to deal with this. In fact, it couldn’t happen again, or there would be hell to pay on all levels.