Location: White House, Washington, DC
—I don’t know who you think you are, or whom you think you answer to, but this is the Office of the President, not some subcommittee you can just lie to for funding. How the hell did the NSA let that happen?
—It was out of their hands.
—Well, then, if it was out of their hands…Do I even want to know how you got them to agree to this?
—They did not agree or disagree to anything. It was just…out of their hands. I felt there was nothing to gain through their continued involvement. I do not know how or why they got involved in the first place. They are cryptology experts. They analyze phone calls. Giant artifacts left behind by alien civilizations seem a tad out of their league. If we need to talk about this project over the phone, then I will ask the NSA.
—It’s nice to see you have such great respect for our national agencies. One question. Who are you to tell the NSA what they can and can’t do? Forget that. Just who the hell are you?
—I have the utmost respect for the National Security Agency. I also hold my dentist and my accountant in very high esteem. I have not, however, asked either of them to lead our research team.
—You didn’t answer my question.
—What were you told when you took this job?
—Nothing! I was told to cooperate with you as much as I could in the interest of national security. Well, I think this, right now, may be as much as I can.
—You might want to “sleep on it,” as they say, in the interest of national security.
—You killed eight people, you son of a bitch! Eight US citizens—a child, for God’s sake! A six-year-old girl, with curly red hair and bright blue eyes.
—Would you feel any better if her eyes had been a different color?
—Her face is on every television in every living room in the country.
—It was an unfortunate incident. I wish I could say it was not foreseeable, but that would not be entirely true. The probability of finding a piece in a densely populated area was deemed acceptably low. We had a contingency plan and it was executed without flaw. We did our best to control a bad situation.
—And a great job you did! A bunch of soldiers shoving a crying mother into a truck. That played so well on CNN.
—We have a cover story.
—I know. I’ve read it! A homemade bomb accidentally went off in the home of a suspected domestic terrorist. Gotta love that. You’ll put the entire country on alert just so you can hide your precious little statue. What about that family you’re blaming this on? I’m sure their relatives will be thrilled to know Uncle Owen was a terrorist. This isn’t a game, you know.
—You and I both know I did not do anything that this country has not done a dozen times before. And while you might be too proud to admit it, your approval ratings will jump twenty points because of this. Oh, do not give me that look. You have many talents but acting is not one of them. The election is less than a year away. How many presidents have lost an election during a crisis? Will you really stand there and tell me you did not think about that? Not even for a moment?
You can admit it. You were not a causal factor in this tragedy and you bear little to no responsibility for the death of that little girl. I see no reason for you to feel shame because you stand to benefit from it.
And, for the record, it is not a statue. It appears to be some sort of vehicle.
—…There was nothing in the report to suggest…
—Your report may be a bit outdated. I assumed we would not find all the parts on US soil, so I put together a second team to fly drone planes at very high altitudes outside the United States.
—This is just surreal. When was that?
—About six months ago.
—Six months! But you had barely started the search six months ago!
—Why delay the inevitable? We started with the Arctic since it is mostly uninhabited. We found something under the ice on Ellesmere Island, something you will find interesting.
—Don’t you think you should have talked to, let me see, me, before you did anything that stupid?
—My dear Robert. I thoroughly enjoy talking to you. You can rest assured I would have come to you without hesitation had I thought for a second it was something I needed to do.
—Go to hell…And what does Canada have to say about being invaded?
—They barely knew we were there. They are so worried about Danish ships challenging their territory, they probably welcome having us patrolling the area.
We found the torso. It is big, very big. On the surface it looks like every other piece, but we found a very small hatch on the back. This one is hollow. There is a large chamber inside, with what appears to be a control room.
—You mean it can move? Like a robot?
—That is our current assumption. We can confirm it once we find the rest of the pieces.
—OK. I wasn’t expecting that one, but we already have plenty of things that can move, on land, in water, in the air, in space even. Does it have any offensive capabilities?
—We will know when we have all the pieces. As I said before, we really need to expand our search outside the United States.
—How many other countries do you have in mind?
—What do you mean?
—What do I…? It’s a simple question. How many countries?
—All of them, of course.
—Let me get this straight. You want this president to authorize violating the airspace of every single country on the planet so you can spread radioactive material over them, all in the hopes of finding parts of a giant alien robot. Is that all?
—No, it is not. He needs to be prepared to do a lot more than that. This is only the beginning. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that he be clear on this.
Flying over other countries uninvited is easy. If we do this right, no one will ever know we were there. But if it works—and it will work, eventually—these body parts will surface. Some will surface in the middle of nowhere, but some will definitely surface where you do not want them to. They will come up hard, and they will come up fast, and they will destroy things. You thought Flagstaff was bad. Imagine what one of these things will do to downtown London or Paris. How about the Red Square in Moscow? A lot more than eight people will die, a whole lot more. They will be as innocent as the ones that just died. More little girls with curly red hair.
Most importantly, my people will not always be there in a matter of minutes to collect the pieces, which means other people will. They most likely will have no idea what they are looking at, but it will not take them long to figure out that it is worth their attention. Most likely, they will also not be happy about their little girls being crushed into the Earth.
You will need to get the pieces back from these people. You will ask nicely at first. Some of them will listen. Some of them will not.
What then? There will already be a whole lot of blood on your hands. Will you stop there? You really need to ask yourself: “What am I prepared to do?” If you and the president are not willing to go all the way, there are other players in this game who might not have the same reservations.
—Don’t threaten me. Don’t ever threaten me. You might have enough pull with this office to force me to listen to you, but if you ever threaten me again, you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life in some third-rate country being water-boarded ten times a day. I know people too. Do I make myself clear?