Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Understood, Shadow Lead,” the AWACS controller said. “Keep us informed.”

  Will snorted to himself as the alien craft came into view. The pilots had speculated endlessly on what the alien ships might look like – if they didn’t have to worry about aerodynamics, their designers could go nuts if they wanted – but his first sight of the alien craft was somewhat disappointing. The craft was shaped like a giant egg, barely twice the size of a transport helicopter, with no visible drive system. It was as smooth and pristine as a bowling ball. For a moment, he felt a flicker of envy. The Raptor was a wonderful aircraft, but the alien ship outmatched it and made it look like a child’s toy. It seemed to be cooperating, slowing to a speed the Raptors could match with ease, yet it could accelerate at any moment and leave them eating its dust. The lesson wasn't lost on him.

  If it comes down to a fight, they can run rings around us, he thought. It wasn't something he dared say aloud. They’d been warned that the aliens might be able to intercept their radio transmissions, even decrypt transmissions that were supposed to be secure. It wouldn’t be the first time the military had been humiliated by someone cracking unbreakable codes, but this one could have more disastrous consequences. They’d agreed on a series of code words for sensitive situations, yet Will was all-too-aware that it had limitations. They would have to wait until they returned to base if they encountered something they couldn’t communicate safely through the radio.

  The two Raptors banked in a perfect display of synchronised flying and matched course and speed with the alien craft, which showed no sign of being aware of their presence. Will glanced over at it and felt a shiver running down his spine. The Raptors were normally never as close to potential targets as they were now. The USAF – and every other advanced air force in the world – had been looking for ways to kill their enemies from further and further away, not to close in with the enemy planes for a high-tech dogfight. The F-22s were just too expensive to be thrown away like that. The aliens made a mockery out of all of their preparations. The F-22s might simply be swatted like flies if they had to fight the alien craft.

  He glanced down again in surprise as he realised what was missing. The alien craft had been coming in at a terrific speed, fast enough that it should have been creating an air stream that would have bounced the two human aircraft around, perhaps even forced them to maintain their distance. The alien craft seemed to move without disturbing the air around it, leaving no visible trail of its presence. The AWACS was sending a live feed, but he’d already realised that the alien craft was hard to track on the most modern sensors the USAF possessed. If it hadn’t been for the ground-based systems, the alien ships might have been impossible to track with any certainty.

  “New York,” his wingman said. Will looked down and nodded. Manhattan Island was rising out of the country ahead of them, a daunting tribute to humanity’s greatest achievements in bending the world to their will. It was the skyscrapers, standing proud against the skyline which defined America far more than anything else; a credit to the land of the free. No wonder that the enemies of freedom had aimed their blows at New York’s proudest monuments. They’d been striking right at the heart and soul of America itself. “Sir…?”

  Under normal circumstances, Will and his wingman would have guided the alien craft in to land, but these were far from normal circumstances. The briefing had said that space had been cleared in front of the UN Building, with the crowds and politicians kept well back in case the alien craft happened to be radioactive or otherwise dangerous, and that the craft should be capable of landing like a VTOL aircraft. Will wasn't sure how they were so certain, unless the aliens had informed them in their second message to the world, but he knew enough to trust his superiors. The entire American military had been showing a remarkable unity in response to the alien contact – and possible threat.

  “Stay on our flight path,” he ordered, looking down at the city below. They had slowed to below Mach One and would no longer be producing a sonic boom, but the roar of their engines would be scaring people down below. Will was old enough to remember the eerie silence in the air after 9/11 and how the first aircraft flying afterwards had scared people, convincing them that another terrorist attack was underway. “They know where they’re going.”

  The alien craft started to sink down towards the ground, creating an impression that it was being lowered, like some demented puppet craft on a string. There was no hint of acknowledgement, no hint that it had even noticed the Raptors during the brief moment when they flew alongside the alien craft, nothing. It didn’t even seem aware of the missiles slung under the fighter’s wings, or of any possible danger. No one was sure what would have happened if a missile had been loosed, but everyone agreed that the consequences would have been bad. There had been a serious line of thought that the Raptors should have gone up completely unarmed, a debate that had gone all the way up to the President, who had ruled that the aircraft were to be armed. It was a trust that Will appreciated. If they’d run into trouble, unarmed aircraft would be sitting ducks.

  He watched as the alien craft drifted towards the marked landing pad, feeling another flash of envy, this time for the men and women on the ground. They would see live aliens for the first time, while Will and his fellows would have to catch repeats, later. The AWACS crew were probably peeking at the live broadcast from the ground, but there were no facilities for television on the fighters. It had never occurred to him to regret that before. Besides, the CO would have had a fit if he’d caught his pilots watching television when they were supposed to be flying.

  Smiling, he twisted the fighter away from Manhattan and headed towards the orbiting tankers, protected by a swarm of Raptors and F-18 Super Hornets. Once they’d refuelled, their orders were to join the other military aircraft on stand-by, just in case anything happened. There were enough military assets on alert to conquer a small country or destroy the Warsaw Pact armies in their prime, yet what he’d seen had convinced him that it wouldn’t be enough if the aliens turned hostile. The world had already changed – the mere announcement of alien contact had changed the world – but meeting aliens with such superiority would alter the way the human race looked at itself, forever. He remembered meeting people from societies that had never caught up with the changes sweeping the globe and shivered. Was that the fate in line for humanity?

  ***

  Mayor Michael Hundred allowed himself a smile as the alien craft slowly started to fall towards his city, a shining egg hanging in the air. Part of him had been braced for disappointment – the city had been hoaxed before – even though pretty much every government in the world had confirmed the discovery of an alien craft. The world was too mundane, too spoiled to allow the presence of something as wondrous as another intelligent race. Hundred had been a science-fiction fan long before he’d run for Mayor of New York and knew that science-fiction’s visions of extra-terrestrial life had never become reality. The interstellar navigation beacons had turned out to be quasars, NASA’s pretty pictures of interstellar spacecraft had never left the drawing board and civilians didn’t get to fly to the Moon for a holiday. There were no longer any dreams in the world.

  But now the universe had come calling and the Big Apple would greet them with open arms. Hundred had fought savagely against both the UN and the Federal Government for control of the landing site, disliking both of them for different reasons. The UN had a long history of clashes with New York, normally over offences committed by UN diplomats with diplomatic immunity – everything from unpaid parking tickets to rape and murder – and there was no way Hundred was going to allow the UN to control the most important event in the city’s history. The Feds had been even more impractical – they’d wanted to evacuate the entire city and station military forces all around the UN – and it had been easy to play them off against one another. The prospect of a political catfight in public view, where the aliens could see, had daunted even the UN.

  Hundred had made his own pr
eparations for the alien landing, using advice from the Feds and even the UN. A large space had been cleared for the alien craft, surrounded by hundreds of New York’s Finest. All police leave had been cancelled and hundreds of additional officers had been drafted in from the surrounding area, causing a massive drop in crime. Hundreds of known hardcore troublemakers – men and women who went to protests and turned them into violent riots that had to be dispersed by the police – had been swooped on and preventively arrested, held in custody until the aliens were well away from the city. It would probably result in hundreds of lawsuits, but Mayor Hundred didn’t care. The troublemakers wouldn’t have a chance to ruin Earth’s first meeting with representatives from beyond the stars.

  He cast his gaze towards the crowds and winced. The troublemakers might be cooling their heels in jail, or lying very low somewhere away from the landing pad, but the remainder of the lunatic fringe had turned out in force. They dressed as aliens from various television shows and movies, carrying signs welcoming the aliens to Earth. The NYPD had orders to confiscate any threatening or unpleasant signs – he’d made a special request that people refrain from doing anything the aliens might interpret as threatening – yet he knew that the whole display could collapse into chaos at any moment. It was bad enough to know that a dozen different government agencies had set up detectors looking for radiation – or any other unpleasant surprises – but it was worse knowing that armed soldiers had been positioned nearby, just in case something went wrong. He hadn’t had it all his own way.

  A deafening racket split the air as several school bands burst into tune. No one had been able to agree on a shared tune, so Hundred had ordered the use of the Star Wars theme tune, one he’d enjoyed as a kid. That had lasted twenty minutes before someone had pointed out that Star Wars wasn't exactly about peaceful alien contact and it might be better to use one where the view of aliens was more positive. The shortage of movies involving friendly aliens – ET or Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been rapidly dismissed – had led to a suggestion that the national anthem should be played. That, in turn, had led to an accusation from the UN that America was trying to monopolise the coming talks. Someone else had pointed out that the aliens might not like band music and everything had broken down from there. The Mayor had finally ruled in favour of a simple tune that couldn’t cause offence and everyone had breathed a sigh of relief.

  The alien craft hovered into view and the bands broke down as their players – all children or teenagers – forgot their notes. The Mayor sympathised with the irate bandmasters – he saw one of them screaming unheard abuse at a blonde girl with spiky hair who played the saxophone – but he couldn’t blame the children. There was something about the alien craft that pulled the human eye towards it. The bandmasters slowly gave up the fight and the music died away, replaced by a hum that the Mayor felt, rather than heard. The alien craft grew a set of tripod landing struts and gently settled down to the ground.

  Hundred watched as the reporters snapped photos, transmitting them through the satellite network back to their organisations. The Mayor had been told that every news station in the world was going to be covering the alien landing, apart from a handful from the more repressive countries who didn’t want their people aware of the existence of alien life. A thousand commentators were babbling away, expounding on the Meaning Of It All to their viewers, all of who probably wished that the reporters would shut up and get out of the television. They wanted to see the aliens and their craft, not someone who would be gone when someone else younger and prettier came along.

  A faint ripple, like ripples in a pond, seemed to rush across the alien craft. Hundred watched, for once lost for words, as part of the craft seemed to extend down towards the ground, forming a ramp for the aliens to walk down to Earth. Another ripple marked a hatch forming out of the craft, marring a perfect hull to allow the aliens to leave their ship. Hundred had heard of memory metal or nanotechnology, either one of which could have produced such an effect, and he found himself wondering which one the aliens used. If they’d developed programmable metal to a level far in advance of human technology, it could be used for all kinds of projects that had only been dreams before, dreams in the mind of science-fiction writers. Humans had spent so long considering the uses of materials and technology they’d never invented – not yet, anyway – that he was sure they could have shown the aliens a few new tricks.

  Humanity’s export to the stars, he thought wryly. Science-fiction and imagination.

  He heard the Secretary-General praying very softly in Arabic. Hundred didn’t get on very well with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who had the unpleasant duty of telling him that the accused often had diplomatic immunity and the worst they could do was throw him out of the city, but he felt a moment of sympathy for the man. He’d been placed into his position as a placeholder, nothing else. He’d never expected to be greeting aliens in real life. He probably hadn’t even given any thought to the possibility. Hundred, at least, had the advantage there.

  “Don’t worry,” he muttered. The existence of aliens meant that differences between humans were no longer important – at least, that was what most science-fiction novels claimed. Others had been more depressing. “They’re probably not hostile.”

  The Secretary-General shot him an irritated look. Hundred smothered a chuckle as the first alien appeared in the hatch. His attention was riveted by the creature as it stood there, allowing the humans to get an eyeful. It was humanoid, but it was undeniably alien. Hundred felt a cold chill running down the back of his neck as he came face-to-face with something other, something so different that it was beyond his comprehension. This was no actor in a mask, no product of CGI, but something new and terrible.

  “Come on,” he whispered, as the alien began to descend the ramp. “We have to greet him formally.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  New York, USA

  Day 33

  Secretary-General Abdul Al-Hasid found himself staring as the alien walked down the ramp, every step careful and deliberate. In the two years he’d served as Secretary-General, he’d looked into many eyes, the eyes of men who were willing to compromise and men who intended to die for their faith. They’d all been human, however, and the aliens were anything but. The big dark eyes were completely unreadable and very inhuman. The being gave off a sense of great age, a sense that it was very far from home, yet even for an experienced diplomat, there were no tells to work from. Al-Hasid found himself mentally floundering, driven on only by his duty – and a desire not to let the Mayor of New York outshine him. He wanted to run and hide, cursing the day he’d accepted the position. It had been the greatest mistake of his life.

  There were books and television programs that depicted the Secretary-General as the effective ruler of the planet, but Al-Hasid knew that was a lie. The best that could be said for the role was that the Secretary-General served as an umpire and a neutral arbitrator, yet even that was somewhat untruthful. The UN was staffed by men and women whose first loyalty was to their home country, not to any transnational institution, and the powers of the Secretary-General were sharply limited. He had no armies to send to enforce his will, no prestige that could be used to shame someone into standing down, often the best he could do was convince a would-be murderer to rape instead. It was such compromises – if compromise was the right word – that had sapped the UN, destroying any hope it might have had to become something more than a debating chamber. It very definitely was not the Parliament of Man.

  Up close, there was a faint spicy aroma around the alien being. He - Al-Hasid decided to assume that it was a he until there was a reason to change that assumption – stopped a metre away from the two politicians, appraising them silently with his big dark eyes. Al-Hasid wondered, suddenly, if the alien was trying to decide which of them was which. He sometimes had problems telling the difference between some humans and the aliens probably had similar problems. They might find all humans identical
, or they might have intercepted transmissions discussing one of his predecessors and expected to meet him. He plucked up his courage and stepped forward.

  “In the name of the United Nations of Planet Earth, welcome to Earth,” he said. The protocol experts had gone crazy trying to decide what the Secretary-General should say to the aliens. Popular perception aside, high-stakes diplomacy rarely took place in public. No one even knew if the aliens spoke English, although the one message they’d sent to the planet had been in English.

  “And welcome to New York,” the Mayor added. Al-Hasid felt himself overwhelmed by a sense of the absurd. “We wish to show you around the city.”

  “Thank you for your welcome,” the alien whispered. His voice was slow and sibilant, echoing oddly around the silent city. Even the ever-present roar of cars had faded away. “We come in peace.”

  The crowds went wild, cheering loudly, even throwing hats and signs into the air. Al-Hasid looked at the alien and saw him flinch slightly under the racket, the first truly human sign he’d seen from the alien. It was probably lucky that the bands had been silenced by the craft, he decided. Welcoming the aliens was a task probably better suited to a group of trained diplomats rather than an entire city.

  “We have important matters to discuss,” the alien continued, so softly that Al-Hasid could barely hear him. “We must address your United Nations at once.”

  “Of course,” Al-Hasid said, barely aware of the Mayor’s displeasure. Accidentally or otherwise, his city had just been snubbed. “They are eager to hear from you.”

  The alien bowed, lowering his great head for a single moment. Al-Hasid took it as his cue and beckoned the alien forward, inviting him to walk with him. A moment later, two more aliens – both smaller and slightly different than the first alien – appeared from the craft and followed them. Al-Hasid glanced at them, puzzled. They seemed too different from the first alien to come from the same roots, or were they female? The aliens might have been humanoid, but it was clear that they were far from human – and they certainly shared little with humanity. The tales about Ancient Astronauts were almost certainly nonsense.