Dr. Wheeling just shook his head. “The fate of our world may depend on this! Would I trust any government with that? Look what just happened in Korea! There is no Korea now! Millions of people are dead because our governments did not know what to do about one crazy leader who was allowed to keep nuclear weapons as his personal toys!”
I couldn’t argue the point. “I’ve got to find Ben Planck.”
The Alien was dazzled by the lights of downtown Tokyo. The crowds of humans pulsed with a frenetic energy that this Alien found distasteful. He had requested to come to observe Japan in the hope that he would find something different. But this seemed much like what his cohort had observed upon his visit to New York. He realized he had been hoping for something that could not be.
Before disembarking from what Humans now called The Object, he had learned about Japan’s history and culture. He had been shocked to see Japan’s cultural history was so similar to his own. But Japan had drifted away from the cultural underpinnings they shared whereas his whole planet had fully embraced them. Although the terms were different and the actual histories evolved differently, the similarities were astounding. What here was called Zen Buddhism and truly practiced now by only a few, on his planet it was practiced by the majority. And the warrior code that evolved out of Zen Buddhism that was here called ‘the Samurai Code’, on his planet was embraced by all – in fact growing up outside The Code was unthinkable and dangerous. How could one not put honor and wisdom foremost? And how could one not approach life fearlessly? Warriors needed such a Code!
He was also learning how few people here engaged in deep meditation. How was it that though it had been practiced here for centuries, it had not spread and evolved to its higher manifestations? On his planet it was a guided daily ritual for the multitudes! The power of his world depended on it!
Curious about its historical antecedents, while walking through the busy shopping district, he accessed the encyclopedic data compiler his cohorts were building and submitted a query about how the Samurai Code had developed here and why it had not spread across the planet. Similar to his own planet’s history, it had evolved in earlier centuries when Zen Buddhist monks who had come to Japan from China interacted with warring clans in the age of territorial acquisition. The fighters had found that Zen mindfulness could prepare them to enter battle fearlessly and more strategically. Again his planet shared a similar history. “A Zen warrior was a victorious warrior!” was a rough translation of his planet’s most quoted saying.
But as he accessed the data compiler further, the similarities disappeared. Here Japan discarded its cultural ties to a warrior code and lost confidence in the benefits of meditation. It seemed to become a copycat culture with a diminished sense of itself. The Alien was coming to believe that he had less to learn on the streets of Tokyo than he had hoped. And what he was observing was not redemptive.
The Alien realized he was hungry and selected a busy restaurant where he could blend in easily. He ordered by pointing at menu items while saying little and he was unsure what food would be served. When it came he was happily surprised – much superior to their shipboard fare. He also found it amusing to figure out how to use the wooden sticks he was provided as eating utensils. He observed the other diners using them and found he could get most of the food to his mouth.
In the bustle and din of the restaurant he overheard snatches of conversation and watched the animated expressions on the faces. Watching people eat communally was very informative he believed. So much of cultural values and social customs were on casual unprompted display. He found he felt good sitting amongst these people. Interestingly, they seemed happy and involved in their own personal affairs. He sensed no general awareness of the risks and dangers that existed on their planet. He remembered a quote from this planet’s great playwright, “Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.”
It became clearer to him why this planet might be doomed.
Back at his apartment, David started his search for Ben Planck. He began by trying to remember every detail he had ever known about the young man that David and his friends had just called Planck. Then he Googled every data base he thought at all possible. He checked for civil and criminal actions, financial records, obituaries, and social networks and even dating sites. He used all the skills he had acquired while hunting down facts for his writings. He did find some Benjamin Plancks but they just turned out to be clearly not the one he was looking for – but he realized they were already being harassed by virtue of their names – David was clearly not the only one now looking for someone named Benjamin Planck.
Hours went by. Somewhere in the middle of his search he recalled that Planck had loved to watch baseball and always seemed to be wearing a Yankees baseball cap – But he never attended a game at the stadium, only watched on the TV in his small apartment. And he never went to sport bars to watch – in fact he never went to bars at all.
And Planck knew every baseball statistic! Planck loved to present before any action occurred the statistical probabilities of a hitter advancing a runner or a pitcher getting a batter to ground out as opposed to striking out. So David searched baseball references to find a Planck somewhere mentioned. Nothing.
Then he remembered something else about Planck, he loved weather forecasts! He would track the statistical probabilities associated with the weather. He was fascinated with the popular example of Chaos Theory where the butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and storms develop in Florida – or some such thing! Twenty minutes chasing down that rabbit hole got nothing too.
David’s head hurt and his back hurt. Gabriela had arrived home and had gone about making dinner; that is calling for take-out which tonight was to be Italian. She called out to him from the kitchen whether he wanted a drink? Definitely!
When she brought him his usual gin and tonic she asked how his search was going.
“I got nothing!”
“How long have you been looking?”
“Forever!” David went on to describe in detail about the trails he’d tried in his search. He told her about the baseball connection and Planck’s fascination with the weather. He wanted sympathy.
But rather than stirring her maternal instincts, Gabriela’s penchant for scientific inquiry was roused. She pursed her lips and tugged on her longish straight black hair and stared out the window while she thought. Not for the first time, looking at her David thought about how her intellectual intensity cast a mask over her really lovely features. Only after a couple of drinks in the evening did the hidden flirtatious woman in her ever show herself. Gabriela continued in silent thought for a few moments and then said what David should have thought of. “He does not want to be found but somehow The Object knows about him. So we have to assume he is somewhere here and he has done something that captured their attention.”
“But he keeps a very low profile,” David added.
Gabriela nodded her beautiful head, “So let’s start with where he is hiding. Where would someone like him hide? Did he ever talk about somewhere he always wanted to go to?”
“I remember telling him where I always wanted to go. We were watching a baseball game and I had just come back from a spring break trip to Nassau in the Bahamas. I told him what a great time I had had at Paradise Island. I had walked away a small winner from the Blackjack tables….he was interested because of his usual fascination with probabilities.” David then smiled as he remembered something else.
“And you know what… he said he loved islands. He loved going to a remote beach that no one ever went to. He said he envied Robinson Caruso. He said he had read that book about ten times.”
Gabriela interrupted with, “Really? You remember all this?”
“What can I tell you…I have a great memory – and the more I remember the more other memories come back to me! Memory works that way you know.”
Gabriela held up her hand to stop David. “You know what I know,” she said. “I know that The Bahamas has like 700 islands and that a lot of th
em are remote and have very few people on them and would be a perfect place to hide if you wanted to be like Robinson Caruso!”
David reluctantly went back to his desk with his laptop thinking about all the islands in The Bahamas where Planck could be hiding and then if not there, all the other islands in the Caribbean or anywhere else for that matter. But he was on the hunt and he emphatically did not want to go back to Dr. Wheeling without having found Ben Planck. And he agreed with Gabriela: Planck had done something that brought him to the attention of The Object – so there was something to be found. So he resumed his search focusing first on The Bahamas and then crossed that looking for baseball and weather notations.
An hour later he hit pay dirt. In an article in The Nassau Tribune from six months ago there was a story about a little island southwest of Nassau that had somewhat miraculously been spared from a hurricane that should have blown right over it but which had instead at the last minute detoured right around it. That season there had been a number of hurricanes. And the reason the story received the attention of the newspaper was that not just that time but a year earlier too the little island had been detoured at the last minute though reliable local forecasters had been certain that the island was in the middle of the projected hurricane paths. Given how close the hurricanes had come before the last minute detours, the probability that the island would twice be spared seemed highly unlikely.
And further down in the story, there it was. A local resident of the small island, the Director of a religious order there, was quoted as saying it was just God’s will that they had been spared destruction by the hurricanes. And that man’s name was Planck.
Triumphantly David shared the story with Gabriela. She too instantly believed this religious leader would prove to be the right Benjamin Planck. But her reason took David’s thinking to a whole other level.
“It fits,” she said. “Do you know why The Object wants to meet with your old friend Planck?”
David shook his head, “How would I know that?”
Gabriela smiled and gave him her ‘she was smarter than he was’ kind of look. “Because he moved those hurricanes around his island!”
Mostly because of the look she had given him, David argued “How could he have done that? It’s a hurricane … it goes where it wants to go!”
“Go and meet him and you’ll find out how he did it. But he did it!”
“I guess I’m going to The Bahamas. You want to come?”
“Let’s see … it is summer and I have no class to teach and we’re talking about a trip to The Bahamas to meet with probably the most sought after person in the world right now. What do you think?” Gabriela smiled and nodded.
Sitting at his usual seat on Air Force One Hank Scarpetti, the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, found himself looking out the window when he should have been working at returning emails with these few minutes of alone time. He was too tired to work and too amped to sleep. And he had eaten too much too quickly at the $5000 a plate dinner – and the food had been cold and tasteless. He had fallen off his diet for nothing; his good intentions to lose some of the extra twenty-five pounds he was carrying around had failed him again. And the fundraiser in Miami the President and he had just left hadn’t gone all that well. Sure they had raised some dollars for the campaign war chest, but the heavy hitter donors and packagers who had been in attendance had obviously left disappointed with how little the President had told them about what was REALLY going on with The Object. The President didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know any more than they did so he bluffed them with a national security excuse.
Once the fundraiser was over and they were back on Air Force One heading back to D.C., the President had roasted his Chief of Staff for not having anything that the President could say. Scarpetti really couldn’t blame the President – it was his job to know the important things that were going on. He was supposed to make the President look good and in control. The sad truth was that they didn’t know anything about The Object. Like everyone else, all they could do was guess.
Guessing wasn’t much of a basis for action or policy making. The President desperately wanted to appear to be doing something. The media was hounding The White House for answers to questions about The Object. And they had an endless stream of questions. Unfortunately, The White House had no answers – lots of experts with lots of what they claimed were educated guesses, but to Scarpetti they didn’t seem any better than what his golf buddies came up with. Though he shouldn’t disparage his golf buddies – they were pretty big players in Washington in their own right.
In fact he realized he should call one of them. General Carl Greene had been put in charge of the military’s response to all things related to The Object. Maybe Greene had come up with something he could feed to the President.
Thinking about what the military might know led him to thinking about what had happened in Korea. As cynical as he had become – and the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States had to be extremely cynical just to survive in D.C., and he had now served two Presidents in that position – he still was amazed at how quickly the nuclear holocaust that had destroyed North and South Korea had faded from the nation’s consciousness. Once The Object had showed up, the Korea story disappeared in the media. It was like the media couldn’t concentrate on more than one thing at a time. A visitor from outer space was a bigger story than nuclear destruction with twenty million killed. Now there were just routine follow up stories about Korea much like the stories that followed the cleanup after a Category Five hurricane destroyed an island country like Haiti.
The American people didn’t like the Korea story to begin with. They wanted to forget all the Americans – soldiers and civilians -- who had died there. They wanted to forget that it had been American nuclear weapons that had been used to respond to the North Korea nukes. Scarpetti knew that all the protocols had been followed and the United States had to do what it did, no one argued otherwise; both parties were in in true bi-partisan lock step on that, still the result was horrific. It gave him nightmares and he knew the President was suffering too.
Scarpetti liked the President. He liked that the President was a genuinely nice man. A little too sure of himself and too concerned with his own destiny but Scarpetti had seen worse among the political leaders who commingled in Washington like prideful roosters. He had been brought in just a year ago as the savvy political pro that would help rescue this administration’s agenda from the quagmire it had settled into. At sixty years old it was to be his final hurrah; a proof point that he had a made a difference with his life. He thought he had been making some progress before Korea happened and then The Object showed up. Now he knew he had just been moving the furniture around.
The thing about Washington he had learned was that most of the time just moving the furniture around was enough to get by. The country was pretty indestructible; at its core it had an ambitious and inexorable spirit that pushed it forward and it was big hearted too in a way that made him proud to be an American. The President’s job – and his by extension -- was just to ensure that the country remained strong and that all the people benefitted. Most of the time, that was it. Just do that. Not that doing that was so easy, but it was clear to him what was called for.
But now was one of those times which occurred only once or twice a century when the world shifted. New major forces came into play and real existential risk surfaced. Now the political leaders in Washington had to be good at something more than just winning elections. Maybe once upon a time Washington had been about more than just elections, but probably that was all it had ever been about. If so, then during those prior existential risk moments, the country had been lucky. The leaders could do more than just win elections. With the challenges now facing the country and the political leaders running the country now, it was going to take a lot of luck. Scarpetti wanted to believe that he could help the President make the right decisions so that luck was less of a factor
. Sitting there at 35,000 feet onboard Air Force One he wasn’t at all confident. The country needed to be lucky.
He took another sip of the scotch and water he’d been working on for the last thirty minutes. He wanted to gulp it down and get another but he knew he’d had enough. He couldn’t afford a hangover tomorrow: there was just too much to do. Being a good drinker was a real political asset in Washington circles but at sixty he couldn’t drink like he used to. The hangovers came quicker and lasted longer. He took another sip.
Looking out the window at thirty five thousand feet he saw the continuous blaze of city and suburban lights below that more than anything showed the population density of America’s East Coast. All the people down there were looking to the President – and by extension, looking to him – to get them safely through the geopolitical unrest caused by the nuclear devastation in Korea and the risks and uncertainty of newly discovered alien life that now hovered threateningly above their heads. Until just a few weeks ago he believed ardently that the U.S. government could protect and serve the people, could guide and deliver them to a safe and prosperous future. Now, sitting quietly and alone in the sky over Washington, numbed a little by the good scotch whiskey, he felt no such certainty. And he wasn’t the only one feeling the stress and anxiety. He’d been around the White House of too many administrations not to be able to sense the collective mood. The people that worked there, from the President on down, all felt it. They were the true insiders and knew the detail of things. And like him, they were worried and unsure of what was happening. Unsure of what was going to happen. They were scared. And so was he.
As the pilot of the small chartered airplane circled the little island sitting like a beach encircled jewel in the quiet turquoise waters of the Caribbean, David spotted the small landing strip and then alongside that a row of two story buildings that he had been told was the remnant of an exclusive resort hotel that had gone bankrupt twenty years earlier. Gabriela sitting next to him was also craning her neck to look out the window and in the window seat in front was Dr. Wheeling doing the same thing.
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