Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  He was reminded, suddenly, of an old story that had been circulating around the UN since 1990. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar had not only seen a UFO, but he had witnessed, along with his bodyguards, a woman being abducted by little grey aliens. No one knew for sure if the story was true - Javier Perez de Cuellar had never confirmed it publicly – and he’d taken the secret to his grave. Al-Hasid wondered if his predecessor had shared the same sense of growing unreality, or if it had all been a hoax. There was no way to know.

  The alien showed no reaction to the lines of NYPD officers and UN Security Staff, or the shouted questions hurled by the reporters on the other side of the barriers. Al-Hasid allowed himself a moment of relief – some of the questions were downright imprudent, if not outrageous or stupid – as they reached the Main Entrance. Normally, anyone going into the building would go through a security check – the UN was a prime terrorist target – but it had been decided to allow the alien through without any checks. Attempting to search the alien would have probably been taken as a hostile act.

  His lips twitched. One of the contingency plans the Americans had hastily drawn up had included confiscating the alien craft until a NEST team could examine it to confirm that it posed no threat, something that would definitely have been regarded as an act of war. He wouldn’t have been too happy to have his private jet confiscated.

  “We have prepared rooms for you,” he said, remembering his duty as a host. “Do you require time to rest?”

  “No,” the alien whispered. Al-Hasid smiled to himself. The diplomats would have quite happily waited for hours for the alien. No one wanted to miss this meeting. “We can speak at once to the assembled diplomats.”

  Al-Hasid smiled as the alien was led into the United Nations General Assembly. Normally, it would be rarely more than half-full, but now it was standing room only in the observation gallery. Almost every reporter in the world had demanded admittance, but only a handful could be permitted entry. A quota system had been established, and the live footage from the meeting would be shared with all television networks without charge, but some networks were already screaming about having been denied access. Al-Hasid was quietly rather pleased with Al Jazeera’s absence, even though he knew he’d pay for it later. Al Jazeera had been something of a nuisance ever since it had published a report claiming that Al-Hasid was on the American payroll. It was completely inaccurate, not least because the Americans hardly needed to bother.

  He watched as the alien walked right towards the podium, as if he was already familiar with the chamber. He had already decided to disperse with protocol, but Al-Hasid knew that no one would care. The impact of the alien’s presence was such that he could have recited nothing more than the names of stars, or countries in the United Nations, and they would have listened raptly. The two smaller aliens took up positions behind their leader – at least, Al-Hasid assumed that he was their leader, although he had to remind himself not to take anything for granted – and waited. The entire chamber fell silent.

  ***

  Abigail had been lucky. WNN had pulled every string and called in every favour it was owed and had obtained one of the coveted places in the General Assembly. All three of the main American networks were represented, along with representatives from the BBC and various other famous networks, covering almost the entire world. The alien message, whatever it was, would be going out to the entire world. No government – at least not in the West – could avoid broadcasting it, not when it was going out on the Internet and the satellite network. Censorship on such a scale was simply impossible. The Internet, as the saying went, treated censorship as a malfunction and rerouted around it. Even the Chinese were allowing the broadcast to go out without hindrance. Trying to keep it from their people would have provoked massive unrest.

  Her gaze swept the chamber as she tried to look away from the sheer overwhelming presence of the alien. The UN was normally organised by alphabetical order, but there had been some changes, marking the nations that had signed up to the Third World Alliance. In the General Assembly, where each nation had one vote, they might carry the day, even though Abigail had heard that the United Nations Security Council intended to take a hard line with the aliens. The smaller nations, the ones with least to lose, had been putting out stories about the end of poverty and massive wealth redistribution on a global scale. There was no proof that the aliens intended to do anything other than say hello to Planet Earth, but it hadn’t stopped the propaganda machine from talking about a new world the aliens would create, one where the Evil First World Nations could no longer exploit the poor and weak.

  Privately, Abigail doubted that it would be anything as simple as they made it sound. In magic, she’d been told by a former boyfriend, merely declaring a thing a thing made it that thing, which probably explained why magic didn’t work. Declaring a dead horse a live one wouldn’t bring it back to life, nor would branding a state a People’s Democratic Republic magically transform it into a place fit for human occupation. Her one trip outside the United States as part of the Peace Corps had been to the Sudan, where she’d encountered corrupt officials and a mindset that ensured that people would continue to starve, no matter how much food and aid was poured in from the West. The aliens might not be able to improve the world, even if they wanted to help humanity out of the hole it had dug for itself.

  There was a tradition that a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly was always opened by a Brazilian, but they’d allowed that right to lapse in the face of the alien presence. No one knew what the alien wanted to say, but no one wanted to sit through hours of meaningless generalities before they got to the point. The eyes of the world were watching, something that rarely happened unless there was a war on or a big human disaster that had penetrated the news. It was easy to be cynical. WNN had a better reputation than either Fox or CNN for impartial reporting, but how could they report everything? The American public was more interested in which supermodel was being screwed by which sports star than how many children were starving to death in Africa.

  “Thank you for allowing us to address this gathering,” the alien said. Its voice was soft, almost a whisper, but the microphones picked it up and broadcast it around the world. “We have travelled far in search of other intelligent races. There are so few intelligent races in the galaxy that the discovery of a new race is a rare event. It is never ordinary, or common, to meet a strange new life form. The discovery of Earth was a matter for great joy among my people.”

  A rustle swept around the chamber. They hadn’t realised, perhaps, that they might not have been the first race the aliens had encountered. Statistically, one of WNN’s pet scientists had explained, the odds of any given star harbouring intelligent life were low, but on a cosmic timescale many of them might develop life. Another had put forward a tougher argument. There were hundreds of thousands of known stars like the Sun, yet only one of them had been examined in detail – the Sun itself. The Sun had given birth to at least one living planet – Earth – perhaps two, if the speculations about life developing on Titan were accurate. Logically, it was at least possible that the other Sun-like stars had intelligent life of their own.

  The debate had torn apart the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. Frank Drake had attempted to calculate the number of intelligent races in the galaxy at any given moment, yet the figures suggested far more races than humanity had evidence existed. The Fermi Paradox was more confusing and suggested that humanity should have picked up evidence of alien life and, therefore, the aliens didn’t exist. Humanity was alone in the galaxy – or, more worryingly, someone out there was wiping out intelligent life forms before by could develop the technology to protect themselves. Other scientists had claimed that the paradox wasn't a paradox at all and produced their own mathematical models to demonstrate their points, although Abigail tended to lose track of the debate. She didn’t have a hard science background, but it struck her that if the scientists didn’t know what the number
s actually were, their fancy equations were really nothing more than talking points.

  “We studied your world carefully, over a long period of time,” the alien continued. “You are a remarkable people, yet you are trapped in a socio-political trap that you cannot easily escape. You have denied yourself access to the vast resources waiting for you in space, even to the point of denying yourself any defence against falling asteroids striking your planet. Indeed, we deflected an asteroid that would otherwise have struck your world and exterminated your people. We did it only because you had no way of protecting yourself.”

  A second rustle ran through the chamber. Abigail wondered if the alien was telling the truth, for it was impossible to verify. If they had saved humanity’s collective butt, the human race would be grateful, yet there was no proof. It might have been a convenient lie just to make the human race feel grateful – and inferior. She remembered her own thoughts when Atlantis had rocketed into orbit – and how outmatched the shuttle was compared to the alien craft that had landed in New York. There was no denying that the aliens possessed awesome technology.

  “You have also refused to develop the technology that could be used to save you,” the alien continued. “You preach a return to a simpler world that could not possibly support your entire population. You flinch from technologies that could save your race and clean up your world, the world you have desecrated because of an outmoded economic structure that penalises advancement and rewards stasis. You allow the most horrific acts to go unpunished and treat national leaders who should be removed as honoured guests. You are rapidly approaching a point where your world will tip into an abyss of pure chaos as your societies break down and fragment. Your world is on the brink of catastrophic collapse.

  “We can help you.

  “We will help you.

  “Our race has not flinched from advancement, from claiming our destiny, a destiny your race should share,” the alien said. The chamber was deathly silent. “We are prepared to use that technology to help you. We have power sources that will not pollute the planet you have abused any further. We have technology that will bring life back to the deserts and allow you to clean up the worst of your polluted areas. We have technology that will assist your race to develop its own space-based industry and remove factories from your lands. We can place human colonies all over the solar system and beyond, ensuring that the human race can no longer be destroyed by a rogue asteroid – an asteroid that would not have been beyond your ability to halt, had you bothered to develop your facilities in space.

  “We can help you to develop new economic models that will ensure that all of your children have enough to eat, a distribution of resources that will make sure that no one goes without food, or the bare necessities of life. We will assist you to clean up areas dominated by terrorist governments, where people are held in bondage for being the wrong sex, or the wrong religion, or the wrong skin colour, or perhaps just because they dared to speak truth to power. We will show you how to reshape your world and claim a destiny among the stars, a destiny that all intelligent races aspire to from the moment they first look out at the land and realise that they can reshape it at will.”

  There was a long chilling pause. “But there is a problem,” the alien said. “This was not our first attempt to approach your people and your leadership. We sent a single ship into your atmosphere to make contact with the American Government, believing that they would be receptive to our offer. The ship was shot down by the American military and its pilots were killed. The data unit we gave the crew, as a symbol of our goodwill, was confiscated. They have not even attempted to put the data to use to improve your world.

  “We request, we demand, the return of that ship and crew,” the alien concluded. “We demand that American preparations to meet our ship with aggression are halted. If these demands are not met, within five of your days, we will be forced – more with sorrow than with anger – to reclaim the ship and halt your preparations with deadly force. Then, and only then, can we offer you a brave new world for your children, one that you can be proud of creating.”

  The chamber erupted into chaos.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Area 52, Nevada, USA

  Day 33

  “Well…shit.”

  There didn’t, Alex decided, seem to be much more to say. The live feed from the UN General Assembly showed the delegates shouting their shock and outrage, blurring together into a single howl of rage. The Secretary-General, looking pale and terrified, was banging for silence, but no one was paying attention to him. The reporters were on their feet, shouting questions at the American Ambassador, who looked disbelieving. The entire session had degenerated into chaos.

  The three aliens, having delivered their speech, turned and walked out of the chamber, followed rapidly by the Secretary-General, babbling away to them. There was no way to know what he was saying to the aliens, but Alex suspected that it didn’t matter. The aliens had delivered their ultimatum and now intended to depart before their ship was seized. He considered picking up the telephone and urging that the ship be captured before it could depart, but it would have been too late. Besides, the President would almost certainly have balked at a direct act of war.

  “Those filthy fucking sons of bitches,” Santini erupted from his chair. “They’ve stuck a knife in our backs!”

  Alex could only agree. The aliens had just blown any hope of a unified response out of the water. Even the other members of the United Nations Security Council would have problems working with America if they – or their people – believed that the United States was responsible for starting a war with an advanced alien race. The leaders might know better…except they might not. They hadn’t been told about the crashed ship and would react angrily to having that information kept from them, suspecting – correctly – that America had intended to develop the alien tech for its own use. They’d certainly place a high price on any aid they sent to the United States, if they could send any help at all. America’s great geographical advantage over the other four UNSC members had just become a weakness. They couldn’t send much in the way of help, even if they wanted to help. America would be standing alone.

  “They know us too well,” he agreed, ruefully. He should have seen that coming, but they’d all been blindsided by the apparent alien willingness to work with the United States, rather than start a war. No wonder they had never mentioned the crashed craft! It would have been inconvenient for their plans if the United States had returned it ahead of time. “Now half our own people are going to think that we’re the villains.”

  The scenario unfolded in his mind. The opinions of much of the rest of the world could be discounted, as politically incorrect as that was. The opinions of much of the American population could not be discounted, or there would be a political crisis. If the public were strongly against keeping the craft and telling the aliens to go to hell, it wouldn’t be long before Congress tried to impeach the President, or force him to return the craft at once. Either one would trigger a massive political crisis that would paralysis the American Government when it needed to be working as a smoothly-functional machine. It wasn't just the mob of protesters who protested everything from climate change to foreign aid to unpleasant regimes, but the silent majority who cast their votes in elections, for Congressmen, Senators…and Presidents. The hordes of protesters could do nothing more than make a loud noise, yet if the silent majority agreed with them…the President might stare down the protesters, but what about the rest of the country?

  “Fuck it,” he said, as he realised that the aliens were in a stronger position than they knew. “How the hell do we prove that the craft crashed without help?”

  Santini looked over at him. “We show them the damaged hull?”

  “Someone who didn’t know much about missiles would think that was inflicted by a missile,” Alex pointed out. “We can’t prove that it wasn't shot down by the defences around the air base – hell, it’s even a reasonable
assumption that it was shot down. It’s not as if we make a habit of allowing unidentified aircraft to fly through secure airspace without challenging them. Someone could quite easily buy that we didn’t know what it was when we fired on it, but also that we certainly covered it up afterwards.”

  “I see,” Santini said. He sounded doubtful. “No one would fall for that.”

  Alex put on his best impression of Tommy Lee Jones. “A person is smart, but people are dumb,” he said. It had been one of his favourite scenes in the movie, for it was entirely accurate. A single person might appreciate the subtle points and nuances of any given situation; a group couldn’t see anywhere beyond the surface, if that. “You go out and tell a group of people who grew up in a paradise that the United States is the source of all evil and the enemies of the United States share their vision of what is wrong with the United States and you’ll have nine out of ten of them convinced that the United States is in the wrong to go over there and kill those fucking medieval monsters who kill women for wearing make-up and men for daring to kiss other men.

  “They don’t know, deep inside, the truth about the universe. They think that the aliens are certainly friendly, because an advanced race has to be too civilised to think about war and conquest. They think that the distance between us and the aliens lends enchantment to the aliens, because they’re wondrous creatures so unlike humanity. They’re going to be certain that we shot down the craft because…hey, that’s what the Evil Military-Industrial Complex does!”