The Final Call

by Craig A. Falconer

  Her eyes implored him to go on.

  “They’re doing to me what I did to you after McCarthy’s leak,” he continued, “saying things that backed you into a corner when I knew you couldn’t punch back because your hands were tied. Ding and Cole don’t need majority approval from ELF delegates before they make a substantive comment, and neither should I. My hands don’t have to be tied…”

  “What do you propose?” she asked.

  “First thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to seek special executive authority to comment as I see fit. Extraordinary circumstances need extraordinary powers, and when I put this before the delegates I’m hopeful I can count on your support. Some member states may need a gentle nudge in the right direction to vote the right way. Can I count on your assistance in assuring that they do?”

  “Can I count on a phone call before you say anything unexpected?” Slater asked in return. “I want a personal veto. I need a personal veto.”

  “It’s yours. And while there’s no way we could swing it so you can speak on contact-related matters without restraint — not that your national politics would allow the same leeway that Ding’s does for him — I’m more than willing to keep you in close counsel and with however public a role you wish to have. That pair might be idiots, but they make a formidable team. We need to go toe-to-toe.”

  As Slater considered these words, Godfrey held out his hand. She shook it with no further hesitation, quickly surprising him with a deliberately over-strong grip she seemed reluctant to relinquish. “But I’ll say this once, William: if you ever think about going over my head…”

  “Together we are strong, Valerie,” he grinned, unshaken as their reddened hands parted. “Together… we are strong.”

  V minus 63

  Ford Residence

  Birchwood, Colorado

  Just as the final few minutes of Focus 20/20 had flashed by Dan’s stunned mind, so did the final few hours of Sunday.

  He was surrounded by friends and family, with the rest of the Birchwood crew having come through from next door to watch developments on Emma’s huge projector screen. The Vanuatu triangle was considerably smaller than the one that had been found in Zanzibar and would evidently fit within a third, still-undiscovered, mid-sized triangle.

  The few blurry images that had reached the airwaves from unofficial sources presented a clear enough view of the Zanzibar triangle for its inlet grooves to be apparent, and almost everyone who believed it could be real had immediately assumed that two further objects — identically shaped but smaller in size — would fit within it. Any lingering doubts on that front had been shattered by the discovery in Vanuatu, and what was clear now was that the world was one more discovery away from a complete set… whatever that might ultimately mean.

  All Dan could tell anyone was that he didn’t know whether the second triangle was real or not, but that his doubts had grown tenfold due to the ridiculously convenient location and John Cole’s equally convenient departure from the live TV panel just before it was discovered.

  Vivid live pictures of this second triangle came in while local law enforcement tried to secure the site as quickly as possible, and Dan could once again see the same kind of familiar and conspicuous markings he had noticed on the first. These were the same markings he’d seen in his only recent vision, but he was no longer as sure of their meaning as he had been mere hours earlier.

  Back then, Dan had dismissed Timo Fiore’s suggestion that the Messengers may have been warning of an imminent GeoSov hoax designed to further destabilise the world. It struck Dan as senseless for the Messengers themselves to drop a second triangle within ELF territory, and this placement ran in contrast to a vague idea he had so far kept in his own head: that the Messengers may have been planning to place three pieces of a complete message-holding artefact in various locations as a means of forcing global cooperation between rival nations and organisations. But for this to have worked, he reasoned, the second triangle would have had to turn up in a GCC country or one of the world’s few unaffiliated nations.

  Giving two pieces of a three-piece puzzle to the ELF’s irresponsible leaders wasn’t something the Messengers would do, he firmly believed, so the hoax theory was starting to make sense.

  Further support for this angle came from Poppy Bradshaw’s incredible revelation that she and her fellow GeoSovs somehow knew about the chip in Dan’s neck, which told him that they were a more serious force to be reckoned with than previously thought. How they could know such a thing was a mystery, and Dan tried to grasp at the silver lining that the Earth-shattering news which came minutes later had at least consigned Poppy’s mention of the chip to the sidelines.

  Billy Kendrick and Joe Crabbe both accepted an invitation from ACN to give their reactions in a 15-minute dual interview from New York, one in which Dan had also been invited to participate. The invitation went to Emma as such things always did, but she shot it down without even troubling Dan; had he known anything about this filtering action, he would have greatly appreciated it.

  Tara was as quiet as Dan through a confusing and reactive few hours while everyone else tried to make sense of what was going on, and after a while she announced that she was going to bed soon. No one else heard her at first, since her announcement came shortly after ACN began showing footage of growing disorder in areas of the world where it was daytime. Things weren’t quite at the level of overnight looting and rioting — at least not in North America — but demonstrations which had been underway when news of the Vanuatu triangle broke understandably swelled and grew more insistent now that the ELF’s leadership was apparently in possession of two extraterrestrial objects and showed no sign of granting open scientific access.

  Dan couldn’t help but fear that his words on Focus 20/20 — intended to force Ding Ziyang and his colleagues’ hands — would instead make things worse. Had he known what was coming, Dan would have chosen his words more carefully; he knew hindsight was 20/20, though, so tried not to beat himself up too much. And really, in the presence of so much confusion, he had little remaining mental energy to do much besides wonder what the hell was happening.

  “I’m going to lie down, too,” he said.

  This caught everyone’s attention, primarily because it was the first thing he’d said in a while and no one had quite caught it over the general noise of frantic discussions — both the discussion blaring through the projector’s sound bar and that occurring between the rest of the room’s shell-shocked inhabitants.

  “I want to get this damn chip out of my neck as soon as I can and I want to talk to Slater or Godfrey about speaking to Ding,” Dan said, justifying his need to at least try to get something resembling a decent night’s sleep. “Because if this is a GeoSov hoax, there’s a chance he’s falling for it too. Walker fooled everyone, and at the time it looked like things were working out so conveniently for Godfrey that he had to be in on it… but he wasn’t. For all we know, a hoaxed triangle could have turned up in Vanuatu eight hours ago and the ELF decided to keep it quiet until after Cole could mention Vanuatu on TV. And I don’t know why, before you ask. I’m trying to get my head back into the mindset of all the bullshit meta-conspiracy crap I thought we’d left behind last year. I hate this. I hate this, but we can’t make any assumptions about anything.”

  Dan, of course, had no idea that President Slater had mentioned a similar ‘theoretical possibility’ of the ELF falling for a hoax to Chairman Godfrey, nor that Godfrey had perfunctorily dismissed it out of hand. He watched only Emma’s reaction, keen to gauge her immediate thoughts, and he wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or pleased that she seemed to see a lot of merit in the idea.

  “Now that’s interesting…” she said, “because the whole time, since Zanzibar, I’ve been wondering what the ELF’s winning angle is if this is their hoax. And if we’re starting to think this really isn’t the Messengers, a GeoSov hoax is the other possibility that might make more sense…”

  “I said it this
morning,” Timo interjected, no gloating tone in the words, “and now I firmly believe it. We didn’t know anything about Poppy Bradshaw before tonight, but I’ll have a team look deeply into her current and former associations. They knew about Dan’s chip, which was essentially a US government secret, and they were hours away from an attempt to take President Slater hostage. However stupid they sound when they open their mouths, these aren’t amateurs we’re dealing with.”

  “I’ll look into that, too,” Clark said. “I tracked down one of the assholes who worked behind the scenes on their chickenshit attack on you guys last year, and I still have access to the database of old Antidotalist and Welcomer connections… holding companies they used for payments, low-level chumps they used for ordering the materials, all kinds of stuff like that.”

  Emma nodded. “But Timo, make sure you trust the people you put on that, okay? The last thing we want is the GeoSovs getting wind that we’re onto them, if this is their work.”

  “Of course,” he said, gesturing to his heavily scarred arm and neck. “After what the two of us went through last year, I will never take these scoundrels lightly and I’ll take every precaution. I’m also going to call it a night, but Emma… Clark… if you want to get together tomorrow to talk about this investigation into Poppy and her colleagues, I’ll be at Fiore Frontiere all day.”

  Phil Norris, Henry McCarthy, and Mr Byrd, all of whom had been animatedly involved in the post-Vanuatu speculation, made similar moves. Phil and Mr Byrd shook Dan and Clark’s hands before leaving, as the pair of them always had and quite likely always would.

  “What about you guys?” Tara asked Emma and Clark, who were both still anchored to the couch as reactions to the Vanuatu triangle poured in from around the world.

  “Later,” Clark said. Emma nodded, barely breaking her focus on the screen.

  Tara then followed Dan into the kitchen, where he was pouring himself a glass of water. “Want one?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Do you think you’ll manage to get to sleep okay?”

  Dan instinctively chuckled, smiling warmly. “What do you think, Tara?”

  “Want one?” she asked, holding out not a glass of water but a small container of pills. “They’re just sleeping pills, but they’re the best sleeping pills.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “Doctor,” Tara whispered, turning the cylindrical container around so Dan could see that her name really was written on the affixed label. “I’m hardly going to fill you with backstreet drugs!”

  Dan opened his palm, satisfied the pills were safe. “Why did the doctor give you these, though? Do you have insomnia?”

  “Nah. Just like….” she shrugged, looking for an easy answer, “general long-term depression. But I’m trying to help you out here, so I wasn’t looking for a chat with Dr Dan, okay? Put that down your throat and put your head on the pillow, and all these bullshit worries will float away until the sun comes up and we get to start the party all over again.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Dan asked; he couldn’t help it, Tara really didn’t sound like herself. It seemed like she knew better than to mix her own dose with alcohol, at least, but he still felt unsettled.

  “You’re going through a lot more shit than I am right now,” she replied, “so let’s just agree we’re both okay. Okay?”

  “Okay. Goodnight, then,” he said, swallowing the pill as he walked away.

  Tara followed him out of the kitchen and turned in the opposite direction. “Night, Dan.”

  “Aaaaaaaaah!” Dan screamed, grasping his neck as tears immediately welled in his eyes in reaction to what had to be the sharpest pain he had ever felt.

  It was more concentrated than ever and somehow deeper, and it came with no vision or mental image.

  They’re close, he thought, wincing and wishing it would stop. They’re so close…

  When Dan’s eyes opened as the worst of the pain abruptly died to leave a dull but still-intense sensation, he saw that he hadn’t been mentally transported to a symbolic location, either. Instead, he was where he was — at home, on his knees, beside his bed.

  He pulled himself up and saw Emma lying there like nothing was going on. How hadn’t she heard? He called her name and reached towards her, but his hand recoiled before it made contact. Because before it made contact with Emma, it hit something else.

  A forcefield, he realised. They’re not close; they’re here.

  Even this realisation couldn’t prepare Dan for the brilliant white light he saw when he turned towards the bedroom’s door. It was a total light, captivating in its brilliance, and it dared him to approach.

  “No,” he spoke out loud. “If you want me, here I am.”

  At that point, a bluish silver hand emerged through the light like a child’s puppet through a curtain.

  Dan gazed on in wonder. The hand’s familiarity brought a sudden and surprising serenity to his mind, with the Messenger’s two double-wide ‘fingers’ and extremely dextrous thumb bringing back all kinds of visceral memories.

  The hand then turned, palm up, and the two wide fingers unmistakably called Dan to come hither.

  Entranced, and without so much as a backwards glance towards the still-sleeping Emma, Dan McCarthy reached out, took the hand, and followed it into the light.

  Part 3

  Upgrade

  “It is easy for the weak to be gentle…

  … if you wish to know what a man really is,

  give him power.”

  Robert G. Ingersoll

  V minus 62

  ???

  ???

  The white light that surrounded Dan McCarthy was warm and gentle rather than bright and harsh, almost swaddling rather than surrounding him. Although a million questions were swirling in his mind, he felt nothing but calm and anything but anxious.

  There was nothing to see in any direction other than the two familiar alien beings who stood directly before him, keeping a distance of several feet as they gazed deep into his soul. They were equal in height, around a foot shorter than Dan, and once again everything but their hands and heads were covered by a seamless skintight fabric.

  “Who made the triangles?” Dan asked, firing out the question that currently sat above all others.

  In lieu of any kind of answer, one of the Messengers stepped behind the other and produced an item from the small pouch at the back of its full-body garment. Dan took a deep breath and readied his neck for the inevitable insertion of a sharp cable. He knew how this went.

  Or, at least, he thought he did.

  But instead of producing a cable and attaching it to Dan’s neck, the Messenger produced two small matching items that looked like foldaway compact mirrors. Wordlessly, the Messenger then handed one of the items to its companion and walked behind Dan with the other.

  The Messenger in front of Dan held the small black item out and very clearly mimed what it wanted Dan to do: place all five fingers of his right hand on the item’s surface.

  Dan did so, more than a little surprised that it felt like nothing more alien than the surface of a highly polished table. The next sensation he felt was not quite so typical or so welcome, however, as the second Messenger placed the second item against the back of his neck.

  The resulting sensation was not pain as Dan knew it, but a truly paralysing assault on his nervous system. He thought he felt his legs buckle under his weight but didn’t actually move a muscle, only stared into the calm and reassuring primate-like eyes of the Messenger who was holding one of the items under his fingertips.

  All Dan could do was surrender to the feeling and trust that the Messengers were doing this for his own good, like everything else they’d ever done. After an unknowable length of time, the intense sensation ceased as quickly as it had begun; only in its absence was he able to appreciate just how strong it had really been, like a camel’s back freed of a heavy load. His whole body was shaking, but his legs remained relatively stable.


  The Messenger who had gathered the items placed them back in its colleague’s pocket without any fanfare and quickly retook its side-by-side position.

  “What the hell was that?” Dan asked, trying a second question despite his first having been completely ignored.

  At that point, both Messengers raised their right hands in tandem. Each touched a long thumb against one of the broad finger-like divisions that made up the rest of their hands, with the other ‘finger’ pointed directly at Dan.

  “I don’t…. just talk to me,” Dan pleaded. “Put a cable in my neck, I don’t care. Just talk to me. Please!”

  Still holding their right hands out in this manner, both Messengers then used their left hands to point back and forth between themselves and Dan. Eventually, he got it.

  “You want me to do that?” he said, lifting his right hand and touching his thumb to his middle finger.

  Exactly, came the reply. Now… we can talk.

  “Did you just put something inside me?” Dan asked, instinctively speaking out loud despite knowing that he almost certainly didn’t have to. “How can I hear you without a connection? And how can you hear me?”

  Our interspecies communication abilities have increased greatly since our last meeting. Your brainwaves have been studied, your thought patterns have been modelled, and we are able to communicate with you as we can with each other.

  Dan was stunned, not just by the content of this reply but by how much more fluently and eloquently he ‘heard’ it in his mind than had been the case on previous occasions. His conversation with the Messengers on Contact Day had been tremendously more detailed than that which had been possible in Lolo National Forest the first time around, but this was on another level. They were fast learners.