by Gene Brewer
Mike was, of course, waiting for me just outside the door of the Nerve Center. “You heard what the Bullocks said?”
“No. Did they say something to you?”
“Did you hear what I said to them?”
“No, we didn’t. Did you forget to talk out loud?”
This was puzzling. “I’m sure I spoke out loud. Maybe they have some way of neutralizing my spoken words.”
“I’ll see that someone looks into that. In the meantime, please fill me in.”
“They’re afraid we might not get the message unless they give us another demonstration of their — uh — capability.”
“Did they say when or where this would take place?”
“No.”
“Maybe you can get that information from them later on. Otherwise, all we can do is wait. By the way,” Mike confided, “there has been a change of plans.”
“Bully for that,” I snapped. I didn’t even ask what plans were changed. It seemed I would be carried along with whatever happened, like a log in a fast-moving river, and I wouldn’t have a thing to say about it. Unless, of course, I refused to cooperate… .
He ignored my irritation. “The news conference has been arranged for six o’clock. We need to get you sharpened up a bit more for that.”
“It’s going to be today?? Where?”
“In Washington. You’ll be meeting the President at the White House at 5:30. We leave here in an hour.”
“Oh, God. I need to tell — ”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll send someone over to tell Karen where you are.”
“Why the rush?”
“All hell is breaking loose. More and more networks and local affiliates are spilling the story. Some of which is inaccurate. We need to quell that, or the whole world could implode before you even get to the UN.”
I could feel my shoulders slumping. “Well, at least I had a little nap.”
“Let me tell you something, Gene. It won’t be nearly as bad as you think. In fact, you’ll probably enjoy it — believe it or not. Like a party or a dinner you didn’t want to go to but you enjoyed after you got there.”
“Even if Walter knocks off a few reporters to prove their authenticity?”
“Did he say he was going to do that?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, we don’t have time to worry about something that might or might not happen and that we can’t do anything about anyway, right? Okay, let’s go. We only have time for a brief run-through. They’re waiting for you.”
The same people as before were in the conference room. Or almost the same — who could remember them all under conditions like these? And the procedure was much like before, except that, as the press secretary put it, “This will just be a kind of dress rehearsal of the questions you will almost certainly be asked by the press later this afternoon. Nothing too intense — we’ve already covered almost everything. But we’d like you to stand there at the lectern. Would you prefer a jacket when you’re in the press room at the White House?”
I thought about that for a moment. Having worn coats and ties all my professional life, I had come to hate them and had barely worn one since my retirement. But I indicated that I would probably feel more comfortable in them for the unwelcome briefing. Something to do with authority and confidence, I suppose, as well as familiarity. “Good decision,” said the chair. You should feel like you’re on top of things. Mike, give Dr. Brewer your jacket for a while, will you?” I was impressed by this attention to detail, and I did feel better with it on. I began to imagine myself standing in the White House briefing room fielding the same questions I was rehearsing in Room 5. The main purpose of this “warm-up” was to make the setting seem more comfortable, and it did. As for the questions, I was reminded for the umpteenth time that I had nothing to worry about as long as I simply told the truth.
Everything went well enough. I was less tired than I had been earlier, and was beginning to feel that I actually knew what I was talking about. The only new questions were about what I planned to say to the UN Security Council (still to be determined) and whether I was developing any sort of familiarity or friendship with the Bullocks. I repeated that a certain familiarity was beginning to set in, and that Walter seemed to be softening their attitude toward us, at least a little. Several of the committee members advised me to say, instead, that I was “working on that.”
Someone had run to the house to tell Karen what was going on and to retrieve my favorite jacket, and we were on our way in the usual vehicles to the makeshift helipads. Mike and I were joined in the helicopter by the press secretary and the Vice-President, who was cheerful, even optimistic, as he apparently always is, no matter what the situation. None of us spoke about the Bullocks on the way to the airport. In fact, we talked about everything else but them. Family reminiscences and the like. The VP is a good storyteller as well as a strong voice over the noise of the “chopper,” as he called it, and he had us actually laughing a few times, something there had been little of in the past couple of days. Despite the good cheer, however, no one discussed any personal plans for the future.
With the Vice-President on board, we were flying to D.C. on Air Force Two (Dr. Greaney was already on board). It was laid out a little differently from the earlier plane, but still quite comfortable, even cozy, and we had some tea and little cakes as soon as we were airborne. After that, the VP fell asleep (he snores). “Does he do this all the time?” I asked Mike.
“Whenever he can. That’s why he has so much energy the rest of the time.”
I told him about a former patient of mine, “Rip van Winkle,” who fell asleep even during intercourse.
“I don’t think the Vice-President does that,” he mused.
“Fall asleep? Or intercourse?” I asked. Even Mike’s high-pitched giggling didn’t wake the Vice-President.
Thinking about one of my patients led me to reminisce about my entire life and career, and raised again the question I have asked myself all my adult life: Why the hell did I decide to become a psychiatrist? Why does anyone decided to do anything? Because everything that happened before led to that decision. We often hear the query, “What would you do differently if you could? Even with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect that most of us would do everything pretty much the same way. Prot, in fact, once told me that we are all just vessels of thinking chemicals, and our responses to any situation, given the particular test tubes we found ourselves in at the time, were virtually automatic reactions.
I suddenly realized that the press secretary was speaking to me, advising me how to handle the conference. During the remainder of the trip he gave me a number of tips, the most significant of which was: “Don’t ever get angry. No matter what they ask you, no matter how stupid or pushy the question is, don’t get angry.”
I told him I would do my best.
The next thing I knew we were on Marine Two making our way to the White House lawn. By this time — we were late — it was already nearly six o’clock, and we were hustled to the Oval Office, where we were all warmly greeted, as always, by the President, who joked that I was becoming a familiar figure there, and maybe I would like to have an office of my own down the hall. I managed to counter his joke with, “No, thanks. I’m perfectly content with this one.”
The President chuckled for a moment, but there was no more time to waste. He quickly proceeded to brief me on what to expect in the press room. “I will make a short background presentation and introduce you. At that point you will replace me at the podium. From then on it should be a piece of cake. Your crew in the Nerve Center has prepared you well, and you will field questions for an hour or so. I’m sorry you had to come here for this, but it’s better than having everyone involved travel to upstate New York on short notice. Any questions before we go in?”
“I guess not.”
“One more th
ing: we have the video of Walter in the form he first approached you, as well as the disappearing tree, already set up in the briefing room. Just ask for them at the appropriate time.”
Suddenly I remembered what they (Walter) smelled like. It made me nauseated again. “Okay,” I sighed.
The President gave me a quizzical look. “Are you okay, Dr. B?”
“Yes, I’m okay.”
“Good. Everyone ready?”
No one admitted otherwise, and we all marched briskly down the red carpet and into the press room, the President on my left, the Vice-President on my right, Mike and a few others trailing along behind.
The briefing room was about as I expected, having seen television coverage of many a press conference, though it was somewhat smaller than I had imagined (I suspect it would hold several dozen people at most), and I expected there to be more bright lights than there were. The President strode to the podium, and the din suddenly died, as if someone had flipped a switch.
“Good evening, everyone,” he began. “I think all of you know by now that the Earth has been visited again by an alien, or aliens, this time from a planet called Bullock. Spelled B-u-l-l-o-c-k. These visitors, unlike those from the planet K-PAX, are a co-operative, linked society sharing an intellectual capability which is, I can assure you, quite superior to our own. They have come with a message for the people of Earth, and their message is that we must stop killing one another. It was delivered to Dr. Gene Brewer, formerly of the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, who is with us here today. Since Dr. Brewer is the only person who has been in direct contact with this alien race, we thought it prudent that he be here to answer any questions you might have about the Bullocks, what they are demanding of us, and what the time frame for our compliance is.” The President turned to me, winked surreptitiously, shook my hand, and said, “Dr. B, the podium is yours.”
And here I was, standing before sixty or more reporters from newspapers, magazines, television and electronic media networks, and God knows how many people watching at home. Two days ago I would have been scared out of my mind to be standing there, but by now it all seemed like a stroll in the park.
From a pocket I pulled out some notes I had jotted down on the trip, dropped them on the podium, and briefly summarized the events to date. There is no need to repeat those remarks here, except to say that the story of the talking squirrel elicited a few smirks. I confessed that I could hear the Bullocks inside my own head now, without a “middle man” of any kind.
At that point some of those in attendance exchanged looks of disbelief.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “And I’m not crazy. Or at least I don’t think I am. I’m going to show you a short video of the Bullocks’ completely obliterating a tree, leaving no trace of it whatsoever, not even a speck of dust. I personally witnessed that and it is documented. If anyone here can explain to me how this is possible, then I’ll admit I’m crazy and we can all go home.” I nodded to the President and the video, showing “Walter” getting into my car, and the elimination of the tree, and all the rest.
The reporters sat silently, and it appeared they were beginning to accept the possibility that the Bullocks were, in fact, somewhere on planet Earth and were probably who they said they were.
Someone asked, “No disrespect, Dr. Brewer, but everything you’ve told us is your own interpretation of the alleged events of an alien visit. The disappearing tree could be the result of a camera trick, and no one else has spoken with these beings but you. Is that correct, sir?”
“Well, that’s true, of course, but — ”
“And this ‘Walter’ could have been an actor playing a role, isn’t that true?”
“No! That’s not true! They are here, whether you believe it or not!” I had already forgotten the press secretary’s admonition not to get angry regardless of the tone of the questions asked. I glanced at the President. All he could do was offer assurance that the corpse in the film had been identified as a Walter Aragon, of Hartford, Connecticut, who had passed away two days before the video was taken.
Someone pointed out that there were also photos of “Bigfoot” and the “Loch Ness monster.”
I replied, feebly, that the Bullocks inferred that there would soon be a more convincing demonstration of what they were capable of.
“Any idea what that might be?”
“They didn’t say.” I’m afraid my dander was still showing.
A familiar-looking newscaster asked where the Bullocks were right now.
“I don’t know. Probably in this room somewhere.”
Everyone looked around, examining the walls, the ceiling, each other. “We don’t see them, sir — do you?”
I answered, calmly I hoped, that I didn’t either. “They could be taking the form of a dust mite on the floor. Or maybe one of your liver cells, for all I know.”
There were a few more smirks. Another familiar face, host of a Sunday morning discussion show, asked, “Are they saying anything to you right now?”
“No, they aren’t telling me anything at the moment. Except for my initial contact with Walter, the communications have only come to me in my home or backyard.” Some of the reporters were still looking around the room, more with curiosity than trepidation.
“What do the Bullocks sound like?”
“Like a whiny old woman.” There were still more titters. A couple of the attendees looked at their watches. There was even a yawn or two.
“I would remind all of you that prot and fled were demonstrably here. There is no doubt about that. Neither of these, or Walter, are figments of my imagination.” I was beginning to hyperventilate.
The President returned to the microphone. “Look,” he said. “The government has ample evidence that Dr. Brewer’s first visitor, prot, could travel at, or faster, than the speed of light, and that fled returned to K-PAX with nearly a hundred thousand apes and monkeys, plus an indeterminate number of humans. Those are facts. You have my word on that. This press conference was called not to defend Dr. B’s credibility, but because someone leaked the information about the Bullocks’ visit. The Administration wanted to get out in front of this thing and to assure the American people that their government is on top of it.” He calmly stepped aside and I returned to the microphone.
A tall man I had seen on some news program or other, and who resembled Alex, a former resident at MPI, asked, “Why are the Bullocks here?”
“They brought certain demands, and they expect us to comply with them.”
When the man followed up with: “Can you tell us what they are demanding of us?” the room quieted down a little. Even if they didn’t believe me, at least I had their attention. Everyone likes a good story whether it’s true or not.
“First, they want me to deliver a message to the United Nations Security Council next Saturday. After that we will have one year to comply with their demands, which are these: By the end of that year there shall be no killing of any human beings for at least a twenty four-hour period, except for accidental deaths. If that can be accomplished, we will be given another year in which to stop the killing of any other animal on Earth for at least one day.”
“Are you saying we can kill anyone we want as long as no one kills anyone during a single twenty-four-hour period?”
“That’s what they said.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Are you sure you heard it right?”
I quelled another surge of anger. “Very sure.”
Fortunately, someone changed the topic. “Sir, what happens after the two years? If we can comply with the Bullocks’ demands, will we be allowed to return to our normal lives, even if a few people are killed?”
Oddly, no one at the Nerve Center had asked precisely that question. “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure they will want us to continue without — ”
“Pardon me for interrupti
ng, Gene,” said the President, “but I don’t think we want to get into that kind of speculation at this point. Our immediate concern right now is to figure out a way to comply with that first year’s demands. If we can’t do that, everything else becomes moot.”
There was a long pause before someone asked, “Mr. President, how will they know whether we have complied? Will they be around from now on, spying on us?”
The President referred the question back to me. “I don’t know that, either,” I admitted. “But they’re already here observing us. Walter — the Bullocks — have told me they have recently visited much of our planet. They like what they’ve seen, by the way. Except for the human element.”
“Well, what happens if we don’t, or can’t, comply with these demands?”
“Human beings will disappear from the Earth,” I said.
There was another pause while this fact was digested. Even though there were cameras present (only two or three — I hadn’t realized that the networks shared film footage of such events), there was furious scribbling on little notepads. A tiny woman followed up with: “How do these — uh — Bullocks propose to accomplish this?”
“They haven’t yet told me exactly what will happen to us.”
“Do you mean we will all just vanish? Like that tree in the road?”
“I don’t know. But I can tell you this, and maybe I should have mentioned this earlier: they are a very old civilization, so old that they have outlived the suns that originally warmed their planet. They have somehow tapped into a universal consciousness that we didn’t even know existed. I suspect they can do things we can’t even imagine might be possible. I suppose this is pure speculation, but yes, I think they could make us all disappear, if that’s what they want to do. I suspect that the Bullocks could eliminate the entire population of the world in a matter of seconds. Realizing for the first time, perhaps, what I was saying, I actually felt my shoulders slump. “Of course it might take a little longer than that… .”