The aliens also started to combine descriptors—without being taught to do so. Late in the day, when a table was spotlighted, the aliens described it as “table,” “brown,” “hard,” “round,” and “still.” The rest of the night was spent teaching concepts such as yes, no, and, or, going, coming, leader, follower, waiting, and choosing. It was unknown whether the aliens could understand human emotions, but they quickly learned to differentiate between happy, sad, scared, and angry facial expressions.
Day 19.
By late morning of Day 19, the aliens were not only learning the digital language Hermes, but also English. Large letters were spotlighted, pronounced using a loudspeaker, and marked digitally. And then, complete words were spotlighted, along with the objects that they corresponded to—for example, a sign that read “chair” was placed next to a chair, while the word “chair” was announced. By nightfall, the aliens not only responded with the Hermes signals for human, sitting, on, and chair when presented with a human sitting on a chair, they also sent those same signals when the loudspeaker announced the phrase “human sitting on a chair” in English.
At 11:00 p.m., several more books, including some picture dictionaries, were launched by the cat shooter.
At midnight, after a three-minute countdown, ET-1 switched on its blinding light and retrieved the package.
Day 20.
On the morning of Day 20, President Whitman was informed that the laptop sent to the aliens was being used to surf the web. The aliens were spending time on government websites, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Google Translate, Google Scholar, and various science, technology, news, and military websites. They had also discovered human pornography but seemed uninterested in it.
It was unclear how they had connected to the internet.
~ 61 ~
Day 20. Morning.
At 10:00 a.m. on Day 20, the aliens sent their first unprompted message to human beings. Because the only way ET-1 could broadcast messages to Earth-side was through Hermes, which entailed the use of numeric signatures for letters and words, ET-1 had been forced to spell out the words for which it had not been sent a digital signature. The message was nine words in length:
Humans two a.n.d. Alive a.n.d. Walking a.n.d. t.h.e. Home.
For Whitman’s team—at the White House and Station Zero—the message elicited as much surprise as it did a sense of hope. At 10:30, there was a blinding light. When it switched off, the two missing soldiers were standing in the kill-zone. They were retrieved immediately. Doctors reported that bullets had been removed from their bodies, including one from the heart of a soldier. They appeared to have been sutured using some type of laser. There were no signs of torture or trauma. Neither soldier had any memory of what took place during their captivity. They might have been unconscious the entire time.
At 1:00 p.m., the president met with her team in the Oval Office. Strauss and Allen were calling in from HQ-2. Energy Secretary Rao and Dr. Menon were joining remotely as well. Now that the soldiers had been released—not only unharmed but mended—Whitman wanted to find some way to build on the positive momentum. ET-1’s ability and willingness to communicate had also boosted the prospects for productive diplomacy, and the appropriate next steps needed to be worked out.
Only ten minutes into the meeting, Art interrupted the president with urgent news to share.
“Madam President. Almost five minutes ago we received another message from ET-1. I thought there was an error of some kind, so I had the Hermes signal retranslated. The initial readout appears to be accurate.”
Art read the message aloud, carefully enunciating each word. As soon as he finished reading, all heads snapped toward Kilmer, as if he alone might have an explanation for what they had heard. He had no answers for them.
The message was longer than the first one and used slightly better syntax. But it made absolutely no sense. Whitman looked shocked. Silla looked terrified. But no one said a word.
Kilmer repeated the message to himself, looking for some way to figure out how in the world it could have been translated accurately.
Large d.a.n.g.e.r. for Earth. W.e. w.i.l.l. r.u.l.e.
Enter ET-1. Come two a.m.b.a.s.s.a.d.o.r.s.
M.u.s.t. come t.h.e. leader o.f. Earth.
M.u.s.t. come D. K.i.l.m.e.r.
Part IV
the ambassador
~ 62 ~
~ Later in Time ~
Apate 3 Conference Room.
“The message said what? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Professor Kilmer sat in a conference room that had been named Apate 3 by a group of witty Triad agents. One such agent was sitting across the table from him. Her name was Renata Silla. Professionally, she was Agent Silla. To her friends, she was just plain Ren. And to a man who had once loved her, she was Silla. But that man no longer existed. Professor Kilmer wished, very much, that he could have known him.
Two hours earlier, Art Capella had shown Kilmer a video recording that had completely blown his mind. The video was of a meeting that had taken place on Day 15. He and Agent Silla had sat next to each other during that meeting. But Kilmer had no memories of the event—and no memories of her.
And yet…
He couldn’t explain it any better than that. And yet. There were no other words. He didn’t even know why he had felt so crushed when he saw the tears on Agent Silla’s face. That they shared a connection was obvious, and not simply by way of deduction. There was something more profound that testified to a link between them.
He had almost reached out to her then, reflexively, when he saw her in anguish. Almost—until a slight hesitation from her as he moved toward her curbed his instinct. She had left the room to wash her face clean of emotions. When she returned, she apologized for having acted unprofessionally. Then she went back to being, once again, a total stranger.
And yet.
Art, Silla, and Lane had then spent the next two hours telling Kilmer as much as they could about what he had lived through during the time he’d spent at the White House. He had listened, patiently and intently, but with an unwavering sense of incredulity. The agents had narrated, with great precision, the events of his life—from Day 14, when Nielsen first invited him to DC, until Day 20, when the alien message came through. He had no memory of any of it.
To facilitate the briefing, Art consulted a large binder filled with notes from interviews with President Whitman and Vice President Nielsen. Whitman and Nielsen had told the Triad agents most of what had transpired during their time with Kilmer, so that the professor would have a complete picture of the events that he no longer remembered. President Whitman had left out a bit of sensitive material that she didn’t want to share with Triad, but the record was otherwise comprehensive and extremely detailed.
The only person who left out more information than President Whitman was Agent Silla. She mentioned very little about the time that she and Kilmer had spent together, detailing only their professional meetings and conversations, but he knew there was much more to her story. He knew it not based on data, facts, or memories. He knew it like you know the feeling of home, or the sense of your own being, or the sound of your inner voice—like something that is profoundly familiar but still inaccessible for the purpose of rational examination. He recognized her at a level too deep to engage with consciously, much less put into words. That was both the magic and the curse of his sense of Agent Silla. She was a complete stranger, and yet, as if in some other dimension, he knew her intimately.
It wasn’t until Art mentioned the message ET-1 had sent on Day 20 that Kilmer felt the need to interrupt. But now that he had done so, a barrage of questions came crashing into his mind. He tried to sift through the rubble and identify the most important ones.
“I’m sorry to interject, Art, but I have some questions that I need answered.”
“Professor Kilmer, you’ve been sitting silently for close to two hours. I’m amazed that you haven’t asked a question, demanded a cup o
f coffee, or taken a stroll across the room. By all means, ask your questions. You’re entitled to as many answers as you want.”
“Maybe I can start with the easiest one and work my way up to what really makes no sense to me.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“What’s with all the transparency? This evening started in a shroud of mystery. You let me believe that the meeting was being streamed live. None of you would answer any of my questions. Now, suddenly, you’re an open book—with, literally, an open book in front of you—telling me as much as you can. Why the switch?”
“Professor, I was under strict orders not to reveal anything related to the time you spent with us, until we were sure that your memory of those events was, in fact, completely erased. If you remembered even a few things on your own—if aspects of the meeting you observed, for example, had seemed familiar to you—that might have meant that there was a chance we could help you recover more of your memory. That’s also why I insisted that you tell me how you figured out that the meeting had taken place in the past. I was hoping there was something that had triggered a memory. As you eventually revealed to us, however, it was simply due to your powers of observation and deduction. What we were trying to avoid, Professor, was to conflate in your mind what you might naturally remember with what we told you or hinted at. We had to keep you in the dark until we were sure about whether and what you remembered. I’m sorry about that.”
“But why should it matter whether my memories return naturally, or through your prompting, or through some combination of the two? Or if I remember anything at all? I appreciate your desire to put me back together, but I suspect that you aren’t just interested in this for my sake. What’s so important about this? You already have your binder with all the data. Who the hell cares if I remember anything that happened during my time in DC?”
Agent Silla flinched at his last statement, and he could see that his words had been hurtful, albeit for reasons he didn’t fully understand. He would have to be more careful. He didn’t want to hurt her—that much he knew.
Art tried to explain. “It matters a great deal what you remember and how, Professor. We’re still trying to avoid a war, and many of us believe—or maybe we just hope—that hidden away in what you’ve forgotten is the key to doing that. Parts of your experience that none of us can remind you of—parts of your memory that none of us share—might hold the secret to resolving this existential crisis. This will become clearer to you as we fill you in on the rest of what took place—on what happened after we received that message from ET-1.”
“I see. And just telling me where things stand now, and asking for my thoughts on what you should do—that isn’t good enough? My memory of what I experienced is that important?”
“Like I said, we can’t be sure—but we think so. But let me be clear about something. Whether you can remember anything or not, President Whitman wants you back on her side. That will probably come as no surprise to you. Based on what I’ve told you so far it should be obvious that she’s a big fan.”
The whole thing was bizarre. To Kilmer’s knowledge—or to be more precise, to the best of his recollection—he had never met the president of the United States. Now he was being told that they had a close relationship. And for the life of him, Kilmer couldn’t figure out what bothered him more—that he didn’t wear a tie when he went to the White House, or that this detail was deemed important enough to be included in the briefing.
Do they really track that kind of thing? No, of course not. They had added some of the smaller details of his visit to see if anything might jog his memory. Perhaps some minor, seemingly innocuous fragment of memory had survived within him, and it could be the seed from which the rest might be cultivated. That might also explain the small detail about him saying “fuck” in the Oval Office while arguing with Secretary Strauss, and the one about him expropriating the president’s coffee cup when he first met her. He was starting to wonder how he had managed to leave a good impression on anyone at the White House.
Art certainly didn’t seem to mind sharing the snippets of Kilmer’s life that seemed most likely to make him cringe. But, for Kilmer, it was like hearing your own voice on a recording. You know it’s you, but you still wonder—is that really what I sound like?
And then a pattern came to his attention. He had seen Agent Silla smile only a few times over the last two hours, and it was always during those silly, cringe-worthy moments of the story—when Kilmer was just a regular guy, not the caricature of a protagonist who was brought in to save the day. She knew me in ways that others didn’t. That was what she had lost. And, presumably, that was what he had lost as well.
But there was a world of difference between Kilmer and Silla. Hers was the kind of suffering that is reserved for those who still remember—a pain made even worse by the knowledge that others have forgotten.
Kilmer took a deep breath. “Agent Capella, you can let the president know that I will do my best to help—and that I’m sorry for being unable to remember.”
“I will let her know as soon as we’re finished here tonight. Do you have any more questions before I pick up where we left off?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I do. I understand that the number of people in the loop was small to begin with. But by the time you’re in your second and third week since the aliens were detected, there are people from various agencies, hundreds of soldiers, and delegations from multiple countries involved. It defies logic that they all could have kept the secret. Things leak with even just a handful of people involved. Here we’re talking about scores of people, and then hundreds. How was this not picked up by the media?”
“I’m sorry, Professor—I didn’t mean to imply that the world never found out. My Lord, yes, they certainly did. I just didn’t get into it yet because it’s not relevant to what we’re briefing you on. As early as Day 4, there were rumors, but they were fantastic enough that we didn’t have to worry about them too much. They sounded like every other conspiracy theory on the topic and they didn’t make the rounds with serious journalists or news channels. They did, however, push us to create a plan for keeping the news from spreading before we were ready for it. The usual grab bag of agency tricks, to be honest.”
“Such as?”
“Well, just to be clear, Professor, it wasn’t Triad doing this stuff. But we’re talking about things like muddying the waters by planting fake stories about aliens that could then be proven false. Getting some fringe ‘experts’ on the air—people who won’t be taken seriously because they always go too far into crazy-town. I mean, it’s one thing to say that the government is tracking an alien spacecraft, but some of these folks can’t leave it at that. They feel the need to insist that the aliens have already infiltrated the White House or some such thing. Anyway, my point is, there are things that the agency can do to make the news go away for a while. And, of course, we took all the obvious precautions. Not a single soldier at Station Zero, for example, knew why they were there until Day 15—the day ET-1 began to hover over Touchdown-1. And by then, none of them had access to phones or the internet. The Europeans had fewer such problems because fewer people were in the loop. And the Russians and the Chinese… well, let’s not get into how they make sure no one talks.
“But by Day 11, the chatter on social media was getting loud, and on Day 12, President Whitman had to ask both the Washington Post and the New York Times not to print three separate stories that were hitting too close to home. It wasn’t until Day 15 that there were short stories on some news channels that reported on seemingly suspicious government activity and on a variety of other leaks. They didn’t put it all together, but they were getting close. On Day 16, we went public with it. Not all of it, but enough. Yes, aliens are real, and we are tracking them is how it started—and it was, of course, the greatest news story in the history of the planet. The day after, we revealed that we were in communication with the aliens. By Day 18, it was pretty much all out there—not the classifie
d stuff, but the fact that a spacecraft had landed on Earth. We didn’t confirm or deny the specific location, but people figured out it was Shenandoah.”
“Wait,” Kilmer interjected. “Hang on. If the whole world knew about this, there would have been demonstrations—hell, maybe even riots. And every news channel would have reported on it. They would have covered it nonstop, every single day.”
“Well, yes, Professor, that’s right. That’s what happened. Except riots didn’t really materialize because we never made it known just how grave a threat we perceived. But you’re right about all of that. It’s been unbelievable.”
“Then how is it possible for the world to have just moved on? I mean, are you telling me—”
Kilmer tried to organize his thoughts.
“Are you telling me that everyone on the planet has just… forgotten about it now?”
“No, Professor, I’m not saying that at all. It’s on the news every day. I mean, people talked about O.J. Simpson for years—you think they would move on from aliens?”
“Then how the hell is this news to me?” Kilmer exclaimed. “I accept the fact that I don’t remember the time I spent in DC, but you said that was a while ago. What about all the days since then? How is it possible I haven’t seen or heard anything about aliens since this happened? I’ve been living a normal—”
And then he knew the answer. If the world was still talking about the aliens, there was only one explanation for why he had no clue.
The Peacemaker's Code Page 21
