Second Contact, page 5
part #2 of Not Alone Series
“Speaking of dinner…” Henry said, pointing over his shoulder towards the dining section of New Kergrillin’.
Mr Byrd patted his stomach. “I ate at home. We don’t all have one of those free meal-cards, you know! McCarthys only.”
Henry laughed. “I’ll be quick. You sticking around for the whole game?”
“Looks like it’s over already,” Mr Byrd said as he glanced up at the lopsided scoreline. “But yeah, I’ll be here.”
Henry then took his spot at the dining area’s McCarthy table, where regular customers could sit for an exorbitant fee during certain times of the day. The genuine manila folder Dan had found on the street outside the IDA building adorned the wall in a high-security frame. It was empty, with Hans Kloster’s handwritten letter and all of the other contents stored even more securely in Phil’s impenetrable vault, but the word KERGUELEN on the front of the folder was enough to draw visitors from near and far.
Phil would never forget Dan’s kindness in donating the folder to the grill, and even after this many months it still seemed like the public would never tire of looking at it.
In the bustling dining area, one TV showed the game while the other, muted, was tuned to Blitz News. A short feature was coming to a close, on the topic of a widely disliked group of self-styled extremists known as Antidotalists, an offshoot of an already radical anti-natalist pressure group whose manifesto described humanity as a scourge on its unfortunate home planet.
The Antidotalists, who presented themselves as non-violent and drew their name from their belief that humanity was a virus to which deliberate self-destruction was the only antidote, were known for direct action including intimidation campaigns against life-extension researchers and industrial-scale agricultural sabotage intended to bring about localised famines.
Billy Kendrick was one of many outspoken critics of the group, repeatedly arguing that they hid behind the term ‘environmentalist’ and risked tarnishing it beyond repair. “These people are not environmentalists,” he had said a few months earlier, in an interview Blitz News had now decided to rerun in reaction to the fact that prominent online Antidotalists were currently celebrating the Kerguelen bolide as “a harbinger of a potentially imminent and long overdue cataclysm.”
“Egotistic, nihilistic, solipsistic… yes,” Billy said, “but not environmentalist. Apologies in advance for the flippancy and potential insensitivity of my next comment, but these people belong in the environs of a mental hospital, and that’s the end of my thoughts on the matter.”
After Billy’s face left the screen at the end of this brief feature, it was replaced by the trademark scowl of Joe Crabbe, a radio shock-jock turned media commentator who had been vocal in his opposition to William Godfrey’s GSC for longer than anyone else. The subtitles below Crabbe’s face relayed his usual talking points — “GSC power creep”, “American sovereignty”, “the road to tyranny” — and the blood vessels in his neck looked fit to burst through the skin. When prodded on the subject of Richard Walker, Crabbe then reverted to his usual role as an IDA apologist.
Although almost everyone else in Birchwood detested Walker with a burning passion, Henry McCarthy didn’t see the world in black and white. He had supportively followed Walker’s political career for decades, admiring his storied military background and his refusal to bend whichever way the wind was blowing. Henry and the rest of the world now believed that Walker was responsible for a cover-up — the far-fetched idea of a machiavellian hoax didn’t even enter anyone’s mind — but Walker’s motive of protecting American interests above all else was one close to Henry’s heart and one which somewhat tempered his anger over the deceit.
Mr Byrd, on the other hand, was firmer than anyone in his disdain for Walker, to the extent that his normally placid demeanour tended to go out of the window whenever Henry expressed anything less than full-on hatred for the man responsible for piling so much misery on Dan. Mr Byrd insisted that Henry would despise Walker more than anyone if he’d been there in person to see what Dan had gone through a year earlier, when Walker brazenly took to the airwaves to call him an opportunistic liar and accuse him of being a Chinese agent spreading anti-American propaganda.
As Henry read Crabbe’s next comments, Phil arrived at the McCarthy table with a giant smile still etched on his face. “You know what, Henry? Tonight, your meal-card is even valid on the lobster. What do you say?”
“Did you bang your head on something back there?” Henry asked.
Phil roared with laughter and dived into a brief and nostalgic conversation about the glory days when his lot had been the backdrop for countless daily news reports beamed into hundreds of millions of homes. “And last time out,” he said, “the lot’s storefronts were pretty much all empty. Think of the business we’d do now if something else happens and this Kerguelen story picks up speed…”
“Just don’t expect the boys to get involved in any more of that media crap,” Henry said. “And not because I’m back in the picture, just because they’ve had more than enough of that for one lifetime. You would do well, for sure, but don’t expect them to be here talking to anyone. Not Emma, neither. She’s got a good thing going with her consultancy.”
“I dunno about that,” Phil said, still smiling. “Emma Ford… now there’s someone who reminds me of myself, Henry Boy. You know what I mean? I don’t think that girl ever met a revenue stream she didn’t like.”
Henry shook his head. “The last thing any of them want is to get caught up in any more publicity. Trust me. Dan especially. He’s probably over this whole meteor thing already. But either way, he’s not going to do or say anything that would put him back in the public eye.”
“If you say so…” Phil said, backing away. “Anyway, one lobster coming up.”
“Get one for Byrd, as well,” Henry requested.
“Meal-cards are only valid for the named holder,” Phil winked.
Henry shrugged. “In that case, how about getting two for me? And if Byrd happens to come over…”
“Just this once,” Phil grinned, sighing in mock defeat. “After all, your boys did build this place.”
C minus 91
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Emma and Clark both rose to their feet, still staring in silence at the remarkably thorough research that filled an entire wall of Dan’s basement.
He watched them, studying their initial reactions. Clark pulled his head back slightly and furrowed his brow, almost squinting as though looking at something much further away.
Neither Clark nor Emma asked again what Dan thought they might soon have to look for; his extensive research, they could immediately tell, centred around his preparation for the Messengers’ planting of the fourth and final plaque.
Emma moved first, heading for the leftmost section of the huge whiteboard. Her eyes were immediately drawn to this section by its huge poster of the third plaque, much of which was densely annotated and covered in enough geometric shapes to suggest that Dan had evidently spent many hours searching for spatial relationships and mathematical clues that just weren’t there.
But more eye-catching than the fear-busting planetary representation which the Messengers had engraved at the bottom of the third plaque was what they had engraved above it. This was the engraving that had captured Emma’s attention just as it had captured the world’s imagination: two accurately scaled representations of the very extraterrestrial beings that she and Dan had encountered in person at Lolo.
Emma stared and stared. Even in this relatively crude metallic engraving, their startling eyes were evident. The large size of this poster brought the memories back more vividly than ever, and Emma could now picture the beings as if they were really there. All over again, the aliens’ large primate-like eyes struck her as not only intelligent, but kind.
She eventually moved to the right, shifting her focus to the central section of the whiteboard. A series of maps filled this section, and Dan’s annotations made it very evident that he was tracking search-traffic in certain areas which had been particularly popular with the millions of citizens who gleefully took up the hobby of hunting for the fourth plaque every weekend. As well as the United States, and Colorado in particular, there were a handful of maps of the broad region around Germany and Austria which some saw as the fourth plaque’s most likely hiding place.
There was also one very large and very detailed world map with prominent pins marking the key hoax-related locations and smaller pins holding variously coloured pieces of string, forming all kinds of carefully measured shapes between all kinds of carefully chosen places.
Clark, meanwhile, had by now moved to the rightmost section of the wall. There, he stared uneasily at an incredible number of press clippings and handwritten notes about Karl Heilig, the late archaeologist whose daughter had found the third plaque in his abandoned storage locker.
To Clark, the level of attention Dan had paid to Heilig and his family was less impressive than disconcerting. “This is the kind of thing you see when they catch a serial killer,” he said, gazing at headshots and short biographies of Heilig’s distant relatives as well as a detailed record of his employment and travel history. “Seriously, man… what’s with all this Heilig stuff?”
“I think Heilig might be a lot more important than we think,” Dan said. “The engraving on the third plaque is the only real physical alien message we have, so there has to be a lot more to it than meets the eye. I’m not the only person who’s looking for a hidden mathematical code and I’m definitely not the smartest person looking for one, but no one else is paying enough attention to Heilig. As far as I’m concerned, Heilig is part of the message. They chose him for a reason.”
“But didn’t they put the third plaque there because that’s where Emma suggested?” Clark asked.
“I only suggested Austria,” Emma jumped in, recalling the surreal moment when her mind had interpreted a communication with an extraterrestrial being as a question as to what she saw as the best way to deliver the third plaque’s necessary message in a manner consistent with what had gone before. “We didn’t exactly speak to the Messengers, it was more like we could hear their thoughts in our own inner voices. And when I heard the question about where I would put the plaque, all I said for sure was Austria. I might have said something about a locker but it’s difficult to say… it wasn’t anything like regular talking. Right, Dan?”
He nodded. “But when we got out of the craft, you definitely said something out loud about Austria, and that was before the plaque turned up. Austria is a pretty big place, though, and that’s why it doesn’t make sense for us to shrug our shoulders and think they chose Heilig at random. That’s why I’ve been looking into his life and work. I think he’s a clue, and I think they want me to work this out.”
Clark moved slowly towards the centre of the board. “And these maps?”
“A lot of people are already looking for the fourth plaque,” Dan said, “especially since Timo put up the huge reward. Obviously we know that the hoax’s narrative isn’t true and that the real Messengers held onto the fourth plaque in case they’d ever need it — which I think might be what’s happening now — but it’s important for me to know where people are looking.”
“Why?” Clark asked, beating Emma to the punch by a fraction of a second.
“Because if and when the Messengers plant the fourth plaque, they might want to plant it somewhere where they know it will be found quickly. They could be tracking the searches just like I am, so I need to make sure I stay on top of this.”
Clark no longer looked overly concerned, as he had when taking in Dan’s Heilig research, but he was still hesitant. “Listen, man, I understand all of that. I really do. And I’m trying to understand all of everything. I just think that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Pretty much every ancient and modern religion in the world has been waiting for someone or something to return. It’s the most natural thing in the world to want. I’m just… I dunno. I think I’m trying to say that you’re not crazy for thinking this could happen, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to expect that it will happen.”
“How is this the same thing at all?” Dan asked. “I’m not waiting for God or for a prophet. I’m not waiting for anything. I’m actively looking for the truth, just like Emma said.”
“When did I say what?” she chimed in.
“Remember at Walker’s, on the way home from Lolo? You said: ‘You didn’t luck out and land on the truth by accident, you tracked it down and went after it.’ That’s exactly what I’m doing now.”
“You still remember my exact words?” Emma asked.
“Of course I do.”
Clark held his hands up, palms out. “Sorry to break up this little memory contest, and I’m sorry to say this at all, but Dan… back then, you were so focused on finding the truth that you ended up falling for a lie. I know, I know, it came true. I’m just saying: when people are desperate to believe something, they’ll believe anything.”
Dan couldn’t be angry at Clark; he couldn’t help being sceptical, and he wasn’t being overly argumentative. But Dan didn’t feel like defending his position against a point that didn’t merit a response, so he ignored it entirely.
Instead, he turned back to Emma and spoke directly to her: “Earlier tonight, when we first came down here, you said that no ideas were off the table. No judgement, you said. Remember?”
“Go on…”
“Okay,” Dan said. “I never want to be a public figure ever again. But if I can assist in the search for the fourth plaque — once we know it’s definitely on Earth — I have a duty to help. Maybe we could work something out to help Timo or someone else find it, without us having to be publicly involved. We could maybe work out a way to tell him some of the real truth without dumping the whole secret on him; just enough to help him find the plaque.”
“I don’t want to go back to the craziness of last year, either,” Emma replied. “No more courting publicity. We’re one hundred percent on the same page there.”
Dan nodded, glad to hear it. “And what about the other part of what I said?”
Clark then walked over to Dan, surprising him by placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “No judgement, like we said, but I think you should get some sleep and come back to all of this stuff when your head is clear.”
Clark’s words were spoken quite softly, and the tone Emma used next was even more gentle. “I totally get that you want to look for new angles,” she said, “and I know you’re trying to make sense of a million things at once. But if the Messengers want to tell you something specific, they’ll make sure you hear it. Try to get some sleep, okay? Don’t stay up all night.”
“I won’t,” Dan said; he was pleasantly surprised by their muted reactions to an idea he’d been thinking about for much longer than the hour or so since the Kerguelen bolide hit, and he knew when to stop talking.
“Good,” Emma nodded. “And remember, Dan: what’s meant for you won’t pass you by.”
“It would if I lived my life with my eyes closed,” he said.
“Your eyes were closed when they called you to the cornfield,” Emma retorted.
A smile, touché-tinged, crossed Dan’s face for the first time all night.
Halfway to the stairs, Emma put her hands beside her head in the universally understood sign for sleep and gestured with her head towards his bed. “Sleep tight, Dan McCarthy,” she said, talking in the deliberately annoying chirpy tone he remembered from the first few times they’d ever met.
He couldn’t help but laugh. “’Night, Emma.”
C minus 90
10 Downing Street
London, England
In the early hours of the British morning, Prime Minister John Cole was toasting a long-overdue good day alongside his most trusted associate, the inimitable Jack Neal.
After what had been their best day in a while thanks to the low turnout at a high-profile but rain-disrupted march against Cole’s recently introduced measures to beef up digital surveillance and extend policing powers, the pair’s mood had risen significantly further with the recent newsflash from the remote island of Kerguelen, an isolated and once esoteric location whose name was now as familiar to the majority of the world’s population as London or Beijing.
“What do you think that thing is?” Cole asked, watching the footage of the meteor’s atmospheric entry for the dozenth time. He spoke relatively slowly in his newly moderated accent, the introduction of which had been one of Jack’s first orders of business in his bid to increase the Prime Minister’s aura of gravitas.
Jack, the machiavellian PR guru who had broken Emma Ford into the business a decade earlier before turning his own attentions to the even murkier world of political strategy, looked away from the screen and flashed his usual devious grin at Cole.
“It doesn’t matter what it is, boss,” he said, pausing again to take a sip of his late-night espresso. “What matters is what we can do with it.”
“We use it against Godfrey,” Cole said, as though answering a question. “We paint the GSC as impotent. The question is: how and when?”
“And the answer is later,” Jack replied. Much of his work with Cole involved tempering the Prime Minister’s instincts to relentlessly and thoughtlessly attack all perceived enemies; few could strike fear into their opponents as effectively as John Cole, but no one could channel Cole’s aggression like Jack. “It doesn’t matter who hits first; what matters is who hits hardest.”
Cole nodded. Jack had a way with words and his instincts were rarely wrong.
Not a day went by without Cole feeling grateful that Jack had left President Slater’s side to join the then-ascendant Godfrey, and he was even more grateful that Godfrey had since discarded Jack as unnecessary after moving out of the political limelight to concentrate on his job as GSC Chairman.
