“Excuse me, Christopher,” Genesis announced in private mode, the voice appearing to originate in the middle of his head.
Christopher excused himself and stepped into the hallway. “Yes, Genesis?”
“Maxwell wanted me to inform you that the final phase of the Earth mission is about to get under way. The council wanted to know if you wanted to join them as the message is transmitted.”
“Maxwell, please. Max, thanks for the invite, but for now, I’m through with Earth. Keep me informed in the event there’s any significant response.”
“Very well, Christopher. And pass along our congratulations to Peanut, we’re all very excited that the experiment went so well.”
“Will do, Chris out.”
Christopher returned to the lab, where everyone was still excitedly chatting about both the pristine condition of the probe and the massive amount of data it had collected. Christopher tapped Peanut on the shoulder and quietly passed along the council’s congratulations.
“Really? That’s very cool, although it might be somewhat premature,” Peanut said, grinning.
“How’s that?” Christopher asked, confused.
“There’s so much we don’t know. This process is just the beginning. We have to make modifications to the probe and send it out of our universe a whole slew of times before I would ever consider equipping a jumper to follow outside our universe.”
“So realistically, how long do you estimate we have before you think we’re at that point?’
“Maybe a year or more.”
“Get out. Really?” Christopher asked, clearly astonished.
Seeing the disappointed look on his friend’s face, Peanut punched him in the arm and said, “Dude, that ain’t nothin’ but a thang! Put yourself in my shoes, would you let someone take that chance until you tested everything every possible way you could think of, and about a few dozen you couldn’t?”
Christopher threw his head back and laughed, attracting the attention of everyone in the room. Moments later he gathered Peanut in a hug and said, “Thank you, my man! You’re absolutely right.”
“Oh by the way, you ain’t gonna be on any of those test flights, so just get that notion out of your head right now,” Peanut said as he drew back. “I warn you, if you even ask, Chuck’s going to kick a hundred percent of your ass! But make no mistake, this is that continuation of your dream you always talked about. This is all you, bud.”
* * *
President Laughlin and his national security team had been in a video conference with Paul Milton for more than three hours, beginning when one of the separatists’ jumpers flew toward the International Space Station and another toward GST’s SkyHub.
“So, you can confirm that both space stations have been towed to the L5 point,” Laughlin repeated, then asked, “Are you still in contact with the ISS, Paul?”
“The computer is still sending data back and we have nominal contact with the station’s instruments. However, we have no attitude control of the station, so we cannot change its position or orbit. If we were to send technicians to the ISS, it would take between three and four days just to get there, but we would know what condition the station is in.”
“For the time being the ball’s in their court. GST is considering trying to send a crew to their station to properly shut it down for the duration, but I think they too are waiting to see what comes next,” Laughlin said.
“How long do you want us to keep on stonewalling the press? They know the SEALs are back. We couldn’t keep that from them, someone obviously talked. And the fact that everyone else who was in space was dropped off here is also being reported,” said Milton. “By the way, the SEALs are in a bad way.”
“How so?” Laughlin asked, sitting up a little straighter.
“Their hearts are barely up to the strain of being back in Earth’s gravity. If they had been up there much longer, they might not have made it at all. The only reason they’re alive is that they maintained military discipline in their exercise. We also think their minimalist diet had a hand in their condition too; for the better, I mean. The ISS scientists and the two GST guys are fine, but we now have no one off planet, nor does any other country. Obviously this is no coincidence, the separatists are up to something,” Milton said.
“Sorry to interrupt, Bob Abbott, national security advisor, Dr. Milton—”
“I know who you are …”
“Based on your expert opinion, what do you speculate the separatists will do next, what do they want?” Abbott asked.
“I’m not sure,” Milton said, then paused. “Obviously they didn’t want to strand anyone in space, but I have no idea why they rescued the SEALs unless they’re planning to take up residence on the moon once again. Maybe it wasn’t so much a rescue as an eviction.”
Abbott looked over at the president who just shrugged. General Cleary cleared his throat and said, “If that’s the case, we’ll have a potentially hostile force taking the high ground against us, Mr. President. We have to formulate an appropriate response!”
“What the hell are you talking about? Just what kind of appropriate response are you talking about? We don’t have anything short of a nuke that can damage their ships, and I sincerely doubt we’re ever going to have the opportunity to nab one of their people ever again. So I ask you, just what the hell are you talking about?” Laughlin asked, his voice just short of full-on contempt. “Between you and the Director of the Secret Service thinking that having me cool my heels down here is going to keep me safe from people who could topple the White House on its side, I’ve had it up to here,” he said, chopping his hand above his head, “with the bullshit.”
Both Abbott and Cleary were silent.
“And what about those two satellites they dropped in the ocean?” Laughlin asked. “What was that all about?”
“Mr. President, according to my people, one of them was the bird that fired on the departing Separatists’ ships. Image analysis data from the ISS a year or so back suggests that both satellites were Soviet Cold War birds. It makes sense, eliminate potential risks in orbit,” Milton speculated.
“That’s what I’m afraid of—” General Cleary began.
“Jesus Christ, Vinny. Give it a rest,” Laughlin wearily said.
“But Mr. President—”
“Damn it, General! Why can’t you simply face the fact that if the separatists decided to wage war on us, or even the whole planet, there is no defense against them?” Laughlin nearly shouted.
“I get your point, Mr. President. It’s just hard to fathom that a community of a couple of thousand people can completely dominate the entire planet.”
Similar conversations were taking place in the halls of government around the world. General Rowan, once it was discovered that the two Russian missile satellites were no longer in orbit, was executed for crimes against the state effectively allowing the Russian government the convenience of blaming the arming of the Svoboda spacecraft on him.
* * *
John was practically living on Beau Templeton’s private jet at LaGuardia, waiting to see if the separatists were going to be landing anywhere in the world. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to trying to meet with them, but he definitely understood the advantages in owning one of the best-appointed private jets in the world. He was waiting for Bianca to arrive so they could have a nice, quiet, gourmet lunch together on GST’s dime. The crew was also looking forward to John entertaining her, bored out of their minds with absolutely nothing to do while grounded.
* * *
World tension was rising, fed by the twenty-four-hour news cycle endlessly rehashing compounded ignorance for hours on end. The news of the separatists moving Earth’s only two space stations essentially out of reach had talking heads pontificating on their personal brands of dog-whistle racism in the United States, warning whites that their day of
reckoning was at hand. Race-based attacks on African Americans increased at an alarming rate. However, whites were more often than not receiving the worst of the encounters from a people who had simply had enough.
There was an undercurrent of unease in America. Fear-mongering by conservative whites, ginning up all manner of terror in weak-minded and ignorant whites about the coming apocalypse at the hands of black separatists, fostered a deafening chorus demanding that the government, once again, “do something” and had the rest of the world in stitches. The phrase “hoisted by their own petard” was the common refrain in dozens of languages as the world discussed the events leading to today as everyone awaited the next revelation from the separatists.
Things remained quiet through the North American night, and the next morning the U.S. military was alerted that two ships were inbound toward Earth from the separatists’ space station. Each ship took up station over one of the poles, and at noon local time in Washington, D.C., all television communications were disrupted with screens showing nothing but a sign saying “Please Hold For A Very Important Message” in the local languages across the world. The message remained onscreen for a full hour, ensuring that over three-quarters of the population of the planet was alerted to the coming communique.
* * *
President Laughlin had assembled his entire senior staff in the bunker’s observation conference room to impatiently await the separatists’ message. The military was once again on high alert, deploying for an imagined enemy with a completely unknown agenda.
* * *
John and Bianca watched the coverage as it gave way to the “stand by” message on the private jet’s wide screen television. John flipped through the channels finding that it was being broadcast on every channel. While they waited for the message to appear, they discussed the sanctions being planned to isolate Russia for putting nuclear weapons in orbit, and the case being prepared for the prosecution of the Svoboda crew at The Hague. Both were going to travel to the Netherlands to testify in the trial. Bianca kept teasing John about what she thought would be the most effective disguise for him to wear. She had him laughing until he couldn’t breathe as she described the proposed alterations to his face and anatomy.
* * *
Susan Roscoe was in her office, still catching up on the correspondence that had come in during the mission, when one of the graduate students rushed in and told her that all the television channels had been taken over by a message everyone said was from the separatists. She left her office and went to the department’s lounge to find the room filled with faculty, staff and a handful of students. A fellow faculty member asked whether she had any idea what was to come, then seemed very disappointed when Roscoe said she had no idea.
She chuckled to herself at the absurdity of them being clustered around a television set with no programming on it, just waiting for something they knew not was to come, nor when it would arrive.
* * *
Once the message alerting the world to stand by had been onscreen for a full hour there were three chimes, and then a message began to scroll down the screen:
People of Earth, we have decided that your behavior is unacceptable around civilized people. Therefore you will no longer be permitted to spread your insanity outside your own home. From now on you will not be permitted to travel off world or send any of your trash off planet until you prove to us that you are civilized enough to be let out of your yard.
This is not negotiable. Our patience with you is at an end. You may do what you want on Earth, but the rest of the solar system is closed to you. What instruments you have scattered throughout the planets will be permitted to continue their studies, but no more may be launched. You will no longer be allowed to litter the solar system.
If you can outgrow your insanely violent tendencies, then and only then will we permit you to travel off Earth. We understand that our confining you to Planet Earth is going to cause anger and resentment, however there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot stand against us, you cannot harm us, and you cannot defeat us. It’s simply time for you to grow up or you will never be allowed to leave the Earth.
For us to even consider allowing you off the planet, the first step you must take is the complete and unconditional destruction of ALL nuclear weapons. This demand includes every nuclear power on Earth, including rogue nuclear power Israel. Until this demand is met, there is no step two.
There is nothing you can do from now on that we will not discover, and any further attempts against our people will be dealt with most harshly. There will be no warnings. We are watching …
As the message began to repeat on screen the entire world was immediately thrown into turmoil. Predictably, the space-faring nations of the world were in disbelief, almost forgetting the retribution Russia suffered for the part they played in their incidents with the separatists.
GST’s board immediately met via video conference, trying to come up with a strategy that would halt the crash of their stock on all the global exchanges. Theirs wasn’t the only corporation watching its value going into the toilet. Less than an hour after the broadcast, trading was halted on every exchange until stability could be restored.
Fortunately, the majority of the world’s population didn’t see this as a threat to the existence of civilization, which would have precipitated a run on the banks; however governments were worried about the long-term implications of how an embargo from outer space was going to affect the globe. Scientists were being hunted down for comment on exactly what being confined to Earth meant to the so-called common man. The most optimistic admitted that very little was going to change in the near term. The only prediction of doom came from those who described how not being allowed to launch replacement weather or GPS satellites would eventually degrade the ability to predict local and long-term weather trends, or perhaps that those drivers using GPS-equipped automobiles or smart phones might start making wrong turns in the coming years, which was nonsense.
Many who relied on long-term weather predictions for agricultural planning allowed the doom and gloom talking heads to railroad them into predictions of famine far more imagined than real. What no one mentioned was that with the exception of the separatists having brought the people in orbit at the ISS and SkyHub back to Earth, nothing was different on Earth from the day before. The requirements of a twenty-four hour media demanded rampant on-air panic, driving people who had absolutely no buy-in into space technologies to believe that they had just suffered some kind of loss fomenting disaster in their lives ahead.
The militaries of every first- and second-world country were already lamenting the future loss of their spy satellites above the enemies and friends they spied on.
Dr. Milton was finally pushed into making a statement, doing his best to avoid a full-blown press conference complete with hysterical questioning from reporters. He informed the media that the scientists from the ISS, and the two GST astronauts, were in fine health and would be released from medical observation in twenty-four hours. The Navy SEALs, on the other hand, were in grave condition. Readjusting to Earth’s gravity after a decade on the moon was proving to be a critical strain on their hearts. Additionally, none of them were strong enough to eat regular food or even walk unassisted. The military was flying family members of the SEALs to Houston to reunite them, but forbade press coverage for the time being.
As for what NASA’s role was going to be in the future, Milton merely stated that it was being evaluated and that the future of America’s space exploration and technologies would definitely be changing in the short term.
Luddites in America were rejoicing over the anticipated halt in budgetary expenditures in what they called useless science and technologies, crowing that with so much need in the country, spending to send men and machines into space was morally wrong, and that perhaps the separatists were actually agents of God. This of course angered conservative Christians who
still persisted in believing a thirty-three-year old man from the Middle East was six feet tall with blond hair and blue eyes.
* * *
Andrea, Regina, Simon and Damien were in the space station’s control room, equipped with thirty-two high-definition monitors, which allowed those running the station to see media coverage from around the globe. With the cloned artificial intelligence, the real-time monitoring of media, military channels and high-level communications between governments was child’s play.
They were currently laughing at a right-wing talking head show where the host and guests were apoplectic discussing the embargo. It was plain that they weren’t so much upset that the embargo had been imposed, but that it was imposed by African Americans. Their racist indignation was so palpable that it was impossible for the crew to keep from laughing. The best part of the show was when they demanded that the U.S. Government make its top priority gathering the necessary resources to not only break the embargo, but to teach those upstart separatists a lesson and put them in their place.
“This is just too good,” Damien said.
“No kidding. It’s just killing them that they can’t just call us niggers and get it over with!” said Andrea, sending them into new gales of laughter.
“I bet the whole world is going to want to crucify Russia for shooting off those nukes at Chris and them,” Simon added.
“There’ll be plenty of blame to go around. If America wasn’t so damn racist we wouldn’t be here,” Regina said. “It would be great of they twigged to that fact and things began to change. Not likely though. If these assholes on this show are a good representation of the thinking down there, I’m fairly certain that things are going to get worse before they get better.”
“One thing the entire planet now knows, don’t piss off Christopher if you know what’s good for you!” Damien observed. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a brilliant, decent man. But look what he’s accomplished, the most advanced space technologies in history and handing out a spanking to an entire planet!”
Confrontation Page 74