by Gene Brewer
She stared blankly at me.
Mike came on. “Yes, Gene?”
“Walter took me for a ride.”
“Can you get back here right away?”
“I’ll be right there.”
Karen smiled understandingly. She always smiles, and always understands. “Will you be late for dinner?”
“I have no idea. I don’t even know where I’ll be!” I shouted as I ran out the door.
The same bunch I had left a short time before were sitting around the long table eating sandwiches. A place had been made for me, but I declined the food. I just wasn’t hungry anymore. Nevertheless, someone slid a bowl of fruit toward me. I took an orange and began to peel it.
“Tell us what happened after you left,” Mike prodded.
Before I had finished peeling, I had recounted in detail everything I had experienced only moments before. During my discourse, there wasn’t a sound in the room. Someone occasionally took another bite of his lunch, but, for the most part, no one even moved.
“We need to call the President,” observed a man who resembled my former colleague Arthur Beamish so much that I had to look twice.
“And everyone else,” a man whose name I have forgotten, added.
“You mean you believe me?”
“Of course we believe you, Gene,” Mike assured me. “A week ago we might not have. But now…”
The Vice-President noted that Walter appeared to answer some of the questions I had put to him during the trip (or whatever it was), “even though they didn’t appear to be relevant to ending the killing. Does this mean they’ve had a change of heart? Are they softening their position? Maybe now they’ll talk about other things, and maybe to someone else?”
“I don’t think they have a heart. But yes, maybe they have. They mentioned that they think we might have some virtues.”
“Did they say what virtues?”
“No.”
“Can you ask them? Perhaps we could build on those.”
“I’ve discovered that it does no good to try to contact the Bullocks about anything. When they want something, they will come to me. If and when that happens again, I’ll ask them what virtues we have. If I can remember to,” I added.
“Arthur Beamish” asked, “Is there any other reason they might have changed their attitude toward us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I asked them to help us.”
“And that’s why they escorted you around the galaxy?”
“I think it was supposed to be an example of what we can look forward to if we come out of this alive. I believe it was the kind of incentive we talked about earlier regarding what we might find on the cone. In fact, they mentioned that device again.” There were grunts and nods all around.
The Vice-President asked, “Should we advise the President to call another press conference or to make a statement of some kind to the general public?”
The ever-present Barbara wondered aloud, “Should we even mention this to anyone? If people don’t believe this really happened, it may be counterproductive.”
The Secretary of State almost snorted, “How else can we convey the incentive the Bullocks are supplying us with?”
“It might be counterproductive,” she repeated. “Even though there’s some evidence to the contrary, a lot of people are going to think Dr. Brewer is imagining this whole thing.”
The Vice-President observed that if the Bullocks were to come forward and demonstrate their authenticity in an unmistakable manner, no one would doubt Dr. B’s veracity. “What are they waiting for?” he wondered
“Any comments on that, Dr. B?” asked the Ambassador. “Did they say anything about the promised demonstration?”
“Not during this episode, no.”
No one had any other comments or questions for me, and there was no further discussion on the matter. Mike continued: “Given what’s happened, I don’t think we’ll proceed with the regular schedule of events for today. Barring objection, we’ll give Dr. B the rest of the day off. The President may call you at home later, Gene, but in the meantime we’ll take care of getting this information to him.”
Now I was hungry. “Barring objection, I’m going to take the rest of this beautiful orange home and have lunch with my wife.”
There were none.
For the moment the whole matter was out of my hands, and we enjoyed an almost relaxing lunch, followed by a leisurely nap. Later that afternoon, I called Steve back and told him, after he had sworn not to divulge any of the details to anyone else, about my voyage to the stars. I could almost see his tongue hanging out, dripping with saliva, as if anticipating a thick steak. “Ah’d give my eyeteeth to talk to them for five lousy minutes,” he whined.
I mentioned that the Bullocks only wanted to talk to me, but if he had a question — ”
“Their loss,” he stated sourly before hanging up. I didn’t even have a chance to tell him what was on the cone.
Later, Will returned my call. He talked about a couple of his patients, more to take my mind off the present situation than anything else, I think. He advised me to have a couple of stiff ones before dinner. “I can’t wait until next week, when you’ll be free of this thing,” he said. “Then maybe we can get back to normal.”
“For another year, maybe,” I reminded him.
“At least we can try to enjoy whatever time we have left.”
“Which we should be doing regardless.”
“I wonder if the Bullocks enjoy their time?”
“Who knows?”
After he had hung up I had a serious pang of sadness and regret that my own father had died at an early age, and that we might have been having a similar conversation — though under very different circumstances, I would hope. In that case I would have been Will, my father me. Dad would have handled the whole thing much better than I was doing, I’m sure. He was far more confident and outgoing than I, and probably a better doctor as well. I wished we could all revisit the best parts of our past. Walter could probably show us how, and the information might be present on the cone as well, if only we could decipher it. But this kind of speculation only served to increase my general guilt for burying the damn thing. If I had turned it over to Dartmouth and Wang instead of trying to get rid of it, could we have avoided a visit from Walter in the first place?
The President called that evening. There was a time not so long ago that I would have been flabbergasted, but now it seemed like a chat with an old friend. After the usual “How are you?” and “Fine, how are you?” he asked whether I had heard from the Bullocks lately. We both had a good laugh. It’s amazing how some people are able to put others at ease, even under such crucial circumstances.
“Nothing in the last few hours,” I confessed.
“Okay, here’s what we think. If it were anything else, we’d probably keep what happened under wraps for a while. So as not to complicate matters. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing — once in our entire history, for that matter — when we need to be completely forthright with the world’s people. We need to keep everyone on the same page. The support must be there for this to succeed.
“But no matter how we convey this information, a lot of people are not going to believe the things you have experienced. It is pretty far-fetched, after all, and our advisors here have only one question for you: do you have any evidence at all for what happened on your ‘voyages’ earlier today? Anything like a disappearing tree or the like? Maybe you picked up a souvenir or something like that?”
“No, Mr. President. As I told the committee members, this all happened in a wink of time. According to Walter, in fact, there was no passage of time at all. And we couldn’t interact physically with anyone or anything in any of the places we visited. To anyone we encountered we were completely invisible.”
“Yes, I was informed of t
hat. I just wanted to confirm it. And Walter didn’t tell you anything about how they are able to accomplish these things, did they?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Okay, I would suggest you jot down a record of everything you saw, every detail you can think of. This might help to convince others that these things really happened as you said they did.”
“I’ll try to do that, sir. But what happens next?”
“I was coming to that. We want you to make another TV appearance in the morning. Can you be ready to leave by 7:00 A.M.?”
It was here that I caught myself groaning. Rather loudly, apparently, because the President apologized and said, “Please bear with us, Gene. This will soon be over. And it may be the most important press conference that ever took place in the history of the human race.”
“I’ll try to be ready.”
“I knew you would be. Until then, good-night, my friend, and pleasant dreams.”
I had an extra rye on the rocks before dinner, and another one afterward, and was sound asleep the minute we got into our nice, warm bed.
DAY FIVE
I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom — another reason not to like broccoli (the drinks may also have had something to do with it). After that I went to the kitchen for some water, looked out the window, shocked as always by the huge trailer with the ever-present guards out front, looming in the glare of the backyard light. It seemed so unreal that I wondered whether I was imagining it. But I could also feel the presence of something else. “Walter, are you here?”
“Where else would we be?”
“Back where you came from would be nice.”
His reply, “Our deepest apologies,” reeked of cynicism. “However, we’re going to be here for a little while yet.”
Once again I was breathing hard, and my ears were ringing. Things were happening that I couldn’t control, a situation I have always hated, that we all hate and fear to one degree or another. That’s why we panic when we feel a sudden chest pain or the like. I was having a hard time determining where I was, when it was. Somehow I had lost all track of time and place. How was this possible? I felt myself sighing as I resigned myself to my situation, like a horse that has just been broken after a long struggle. “Can you tell me what you’ve got planned for me today?”
“That’s up to your government friends. We don’t care what you do today, or any other day. Only the eighth day matters. We’ve been watching some of your television stations, reading your newspapers. The odds against your success at the United Nations are astronomical. You sapiens care about a dozen short-term desires more than your own long-term survival. It has always been this way and will be so until you evolve into a species less self-centered and violent.”
For some reason that statement, uttered so arrogantly, if matter-of-factly, peeved me. Who did these — these ants! — think they were, to come here and tell us to “evolve”? “When the hell are you going to demonstrate to the world that you can do what you say you can?” I screeched, with a very Walter-like scowl.
“You’ll get your demonstration very soon now.”
“You said that before!” I shouted internally.
He disappeared immediately, of course, but I felt nauseated as I went back to bed, unable even to finish the water. I turned over and watched the numbers on the digital clock cleverly lose or gain a little red bar. It’s amazing how slowly time passes when you watch it, and how quickly when you don’t. Either way, though, it moves relentlessly, and you eventually end up at the same place. Unless you’re a Bullock, of course, and can probably manipulate it any way you want. I wondered whether they could, in fact, stop the movement of time at will? Apparently, since they can stop or even reverse it when they saunter through the galaxy. But then they become invisible and unable to interact with their surroundings. As Heisenberg said, there are limits, though not the ones he imagined.
Speculation aside, the Bullocks had promised a convincing demonstration of their power, one, presumably, that many people could witness. I hoped it would come before my re-grilling by the world’s press. Maybe then there wouldn’t be any doubt in anyone’s mind that what I was telling them was the truth.
I must have dozed off, because the clock suddenly said 6:45 (the alarm was supposed to go off at 6:00, when I would have an hour to get ready for another trip to Washington). I jumped up and headed for the shower, quite annoyed with my wife for re-setting or turning off the alarm. But before I could get out the bedroom door she came in with a tray. “I thought you might like something nice before you run off to the see the powers that be,” she said sweetly. “I called Mike and everything has been delayed an hour.” I remembered again how much I loved her. It seemed as if a great load had been lifted from my shoulders, if only for sixty minutes. We enjoyed a quiet breakfast and, after a leisurely shower, I was ready for anything.
At eight o’clock to the minute there was a tapping on the back door. “Come in,” I yelled, and Mike appeared.
Instead of the usual cheery ‘“good morning,” he said, rather breathlessly, I thought, “Have you been watching the news?”
“No. Is something happening?”
“I’ll tell you about it on the way. You might want to turn on ‘Good Morning America,’ or something, Mrs. B.”
I kissed my wife and we were off to the waiting limousine, one of the usual four or five, adorned with ambulance. On the way to the helipads, Mike turned on the car’s television monitor and we watched in silence as the horrible scenes were repeated over and over and over. First the Taj Mahal disappeared. Then the great pyramid at Giza, followed by the Eiffel Tower. And finally the almost-finished Freedom Tower in New York. It was just like the tree, only on a gigantic scale. Police had cordoned off all four areas, and no one was allowed on the sites themselves. Behind the ropes, onlookers stood with mouths gaping, like so many fish out of water. The newscasters seemed to be beside themselves. All I could think of was how horrible it must have been for those who had been inside these famous edifices. It was like hearing about a passenger plane going down. Then I realized it was merely a taste of what would probably happen to all of us in the near future.
“Keep watching,” Mike said, turning up the sound. Suddenly the Taj Mahal reappeared, then the pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, and finally, the Freedom Tower. It was as if they had never disappeared. The people coming out were being interviewed, along with others who had merely witnessed what had happened. It was almost impossible to believe, but apparently not a single person (perhaps not even a fly) had been injured in the demonstration. Most were surprised by all the fuss that was going on. For them, time had simply stood still for the twenty minutes they had been missing. They didn’t even know they had been gone. Indeed, a few mentioned that their watches and cell phones were precisely twenty minutes behind those who were left behind.
Mike and I watched silently as these events unfolded. It was almost impossible to comprehend what had happened. At last he said what I was thinking: “There can no longer be any doubt about the veracity of your story, Gene.”
I only hoped he was right. I was beginning to wonder myself whether I had imagined everything. Over and over the huge edifices disappeared and reappeared, interspersed with breathless interviews, as more and more people recounted their stories of coming out and finding that they were the center of attention, for reasons they didn’t understand. To them nothing had happened. By this time we had reached the airport and were soon ensconced on Air Force Zero, or whatever it was without the President on board. The only passengers were Mike and I, Dr. Greaney, and the Secret Service. Everyone else had stayed behind; there was work to be done.
This was my chance to visit the President’s quarters upstairs. Mike reluctantly agreed, and I took a good look at the suite, with the bedclothes actually turned down for occupancy. I was tempted to use the bathroom, but decided against it. I took a good look
at the furnishings, however, and the linens and even the walls so that I would be able to describe them to my wife.
Otherwise, the trip was becoming almost routine. The only difference was that it was a rainy day and the visibility was limited, so all the monuments looked gray and lifeless. With no one to see and appreciate them, would they just crumble, one grain of marble at a time? Or would they, like the great pyramids, remain virtually intact for the next 5,000 years?
The President welcomed me to the Oval Office without his usual beaming grin. His only comment was, “I guess we’re in as deep as it can get now. Do you have any questions, Dr. B, before we proceed to the briefing room?”
I knew immediately what to ask. “Should I tell the press about my trip to the other planets and my own past, or will they think I’m crazy?”
“I hear what you’re saying, Gene. But at this point I don’t think we should hold anything back. After today’s demonstration it seems perfectly logical to me that the Bullocks can take trips through time and space like we might go for a Sunday drive. Okay, are you ready? Let’s go.”
We strode down the familiar red carpet and into the briefing room, where the atmosphere was entirely different from the last time. The air of cynicism and doubt had vanished, and all the reporters were at full attention, waiting almost breathlessly for what we had to say.
The President took the podium and asked a rhetorical question: “Is there anyone here who hasn’t seen the footage shown on virtually every television channel of what happened early this morning?” Of course there was no one who had not. “If there was any doubt before, there can be none now that we have been visited by an alien life form so powerful that we have no choice but to listen to what they have to say and try to comply with whatever demands they are making. The combined military forces of the entire world could not do what you have seen today. And what the Bullocks’ intentions were in this little demonstration — ’little’ to them, perhaps — was to show us that they are fully capable of eliminating us, or any other species, from the face of the Earth.