Dahlia Black

by Keith Thomas

  DISCLOSURE

  34

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There were many concurrent events that shaped the course of the Elevation and how Disclosure happened.

  One thread was the Elevation itself and the country’s reaction to it; another was the Disclosure Task Force and their research, and a third, just as important, was the behind-the-scenes work at the White House in developing a Disclosure statement that President Ballard would deliver to the people of the United States.

  This following section deals directly with what happened after Dahlia and the Disclosure Task Force turned their document in to the administration. What I found most interesting and enlightening was how President Ballard’s people chose to spin the Disclosure message and in the process create a new narrative.

  While the administration was pleased with what they’d been given—the level of detail, the science, the messaging—there was still the matter of selling it to the people. This is where the marketing executives came in . . .

  35

  SARAH NAGATA, ADVERTISING “LEGEND,” EDITED FROM AUDIO RECORDINGS MADE BY WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL TERRY QUINN

  RECORDED AT THE WHITE HOUSE ON 11.27.2023

  Sarah Nagata, something of a marketing guru in the decade before the Elevation, was the brain behind the ill-fated Disclosure campaign.

  Terry Quinn brought her in to head up the messaging around Disclosure—explaining to the American people, and the rest of the world, what the Pulse signal and the Elevation meant. Her job was to sell it, to spin it, and to make it work.

  Today, Sarah and her wife are retired. They run a small farm in upstate New York. Sarah declined my interview requests, though she did tell me she “is still proud of [her] work with President Ballard’s administration.”

  TERRY QUINN: Here’s the question: How do we sell this to the public and not create more chaos than we already have? People are scared shitless by what’s happening: this Elevation thing, and the fact that we’re about to tell them that it’s all due to an alien signal that we never warned them about . . . We’re pouring gas onto a dumpster fire. There’s no tactful way to do this, is there?

  SARAH NAGATA: There’s always a way. Sure, we’re behind on this. Way behind. But now that I’m here, I’ve got a few ideas on how we’re going to sell it. Did you know the idea of an engagement ring was a marketing ploy?

  GLENN OWEN: No, I did not. Terry?

  TERRY QUINN: Neither did I. Please tell us.

  SARAH NAGATA: De Beers, the diamond company, hit a rough patch after the Great Depression. Surprise, surprise, after losing all their hard-earned money, no one wanted to spring for diamond rings. The company needed a way to get people back into the stores. How do you motivate people to spend? To believe in something that, before then, didn’t actually exist? In the case of De Beers, you invent a tradition. Engagement rings. No men bought them before 1948; that’s because they were the creation of some very clever marketing people. They made a tagline that is still used to this day: “A diamond is forever.” And along with it, they crafted a custom: a man buys his love an engagement ring to symbolize his commitment. Three years after they launched the campaign, eight out of every ten brides had a diamond engagement ring. Now it’s de rigueur. We need to do the same thing here: get the public to believe in something, in a concept that they will be sure always existed.

  GLENN OWEN: That’s a compelling pitch, but we’re not hawking stones here. We’re trying to get people to understand that, in the midst of what seems like chaos, history’s greatest-ever event has just taken place.

  PER AKERSON: First contact.

  TERRY QUINN: We don’t want the Ascendant to be seen as a threat. We know nothing about the Ascendant, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change anytime soon. These things, people—whatever you want to call them—sent this signal to our planet to spur on these changes, the Elevation. Who knows where it will lead? But for the time being, we’re working on how to reverse it.

  SARAH NAGATA: We need to separate those two right now.

  GLENN OWEN: What? The Elevation and the Ascendant?

  SARAH NAGATA: Exactly. Your goal is to come up with a compelling story about how you’re addressing the Elevation. I’m going to help you spin it this way: We don’t know the cause, but we’re working on it. All indications suggest it’s genetic, something these people were born with.I It is absolutely, unequivocally not contagious. You need every famous medical personality on TV, online, or otherwise to repeat that over and over again. Then say that doctors are spending every minute of every day developing a way to reverse the effects of the Elevation.

  TERRY QUINN: And the Ascendant?

  SARAH NAGATA: Give the Elevation stuff time to settle in. Let people get excited about the fact that the administration is taking their concerns seriously. Once they’re feeling confident and secure, then take a week before you tell them about the Pulse. What happens next is going to be crucial.

  PER AKERSON: You’ve got us on pins and needles . . .

  SARAH NAGATA: The Pulse is a message of hope. It is an invitation.

  GLENN OWEN: Let me stop you right there. You did read the ancillary reports, right? The stuff from the Disclosure Task Force? It clearly states that they don’t consider the Pulse to be anything more than a carrier, a way of transmitting the code to our planet. The Ascendant—

  SARAH NAGATA: And that doesn’t work. Sorry to interrupt. Yes, of course I read the material. It was dry and very scientific. No one is going to read it outside of academic circles. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the public responds to emotion above all else. Even reason. We need an emotional message here. We need the Pulse to mean something.

  TERRY QUINN: Like what?

  SARAH NAGATA: This is just off the top of my head. Riffing. But I’d suggest it be an angle along these lines: The Ascendant have sent the Pulse to us—our planet out of the billions that crowd the universe—because we are special. Humanity is at a turning point. We are living on borrowed time, as they say. Our planet is recoiling from us after centuries of abuse, hitting back with brutal storms, crushing droughts, and overwhelming diseases. Now, more than ever, we need a powerful ally. For the past 2 million years, we’ve been the dominant force on this planet. That’s changed now: the Ascendant aren’t our creators; they aren’t our big brothers; they aren’t galactic bullies or interlopers. In my mind, they are emissaries inviting us to join something much, much bigger.II The Pulse Code is a test, an invitation to be part of the universe beyond our small backwater.

  TERRY QUINN: Wow . . . Well, all right, then . . . Glenn?

  GLENN OWEN: (slow clapping sound) It’s sexy. It’s powerful. I like the messaging and I like the angle. But where do we go next? I mean, we tell the world that this pulse exists, that it was sent by the Ascendant, and that we’re now part of some . . . intergalactic commission. I get that, I like it, but I wonder what follows. You brought up the diamond angle, the invention of the engagement ring. How do we tap into that more directly?

  SARAH NAGATA: With the Finality.

  GLENN OWEN: Okay. Sounds kind of ominous.

  SARAH NAGATA: It’s serious. Sometimes people confuse seriousness with portentousness. It needs to be powerful. From what I read, from all the documents you gave me about the Pulse Code and the Disclosure Task Force’s work, I think there is a general consensus that this event is building towards something bigger. I want to call that the Finality.

  PER AKERSON: And what happens at this Finality?

  SARAH NAGATA: Only the Ascendant know that.

  GLENN OWEN: Now, that’s risky. I don’t know . . . Terry?

  TERRY QUINN: I get where you’re coming from, Sarah. I agree this thing, the Elevation, the Pulse . . . it’s building to something. Obviously. But I’m not convinced that we get everyone riled up and expecting a miracle. You’re talking about Rapture-style kind of stuff. That’s dangerous.

  SARAH NAGATA: Dangerous how?

  PER AK
ERSON: Dangerous as in: What if it doesn’t happen? What if the Pulse and the Elevation are it? What if the Elevation stuff stops tomorrow and all those people go back home as if nothing happened? Then we look like fools.

  SARAH NAGATA: We all know it won’t stop tomorrow.

  GLENN OWEN: I thought we weren’t going to bring the Elevation into this at all.

  SARAH NAGATA: I said we weren’t going to bring it in just yet. We bring it in at the Finality. Listen, Terry just described my concept as a religious thing. And that’s exactly right. That’s what we need right now. Religious terms are the only terms we have to encompass the depth of the emotional response people are going to have to this. To sell this thing, to give people the hope that they need to survive what’s happening out there, we need it to be akin to a revival. That’s what the Finality is about. It’s the future to come, the gift . . .

  PER AKERSON: Sounds like we’d be making up a lot of this from whole cloth.

  SARAH NAGATA: We have to. There are no real answers in the Disclosure documents. The truth is simple and painful: No one knows why the Ascendant are doing this to us. We can’t divine where they come from or what they are. Perhaps they’re like us or maybe they’re ten-foot-long slugs. Are they malevolent? Or, even more likely, are they just indifferent. But we can’t tell the American people that. You want panic and terror? No. None of us do. We have to craft a story here, a message, one of hope and peace. This is an opportunity to unite people that will never, ever come again.

  GLENN OWEN: You’ve got me sold. How long?

  SARAH NAGATA: Get final approval from the President and my team can have a draft copy of the campaign in forty-eight hours.

  * * *

  I. The idea that the Elevation was a genetic condition made complete sense, considering it was a case of genes being altered by the Pulse Code. However, it was not something that the sufferers were born with—not entirely, at least. While it seems as though there were people predisposed to becoming Elevated—oftentimes siblings would be affected, and in the case of twins 99 percent of the time both people were affected—the genetic predisposition theory hinged on the fact that the majority of people who were Elevated during the first wave had inheritable forms of mental illness in their medical histories. This wasn’t enough, however, to convince researchers that the Elevation was truly genetic; it was much more likely that these people presented with symptoms sooner because they were more likely to be aware of symptoms, since they were used to taking medications or seeking help for changes in their perception or thinking.

  II. Just as Dahlia saw herself as something of a missionary, bringing the Elevation to the world, numerous people imagined that the Ascendant were similar beings, tasked with carrying the message of the Elevation to our planet. What that message was or meant, however, was not something that could be determined right away. This aspect, the delayed solution to the mystery, was key to the marketing of Disclosure to the American public.

  36

  GLENN OWEN, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF NEWPORT NEWS, VA

  MARCH 4, 2026

  Newport News, Virginia, is one of the few places on the East Coast that retains an uncanny semblance to its pre-Elevation condition.

  There is a steady population, the vast majority from the surrounding states, of 100,000 people and all the sounds and sights one associates with a maritime city for the upwardly mobile and the established elites.

  Glenn Owen moved here a year after the Finality. He tells me he was searching for a new life in an old place. He could have chosen something farther north, perhaps in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, but liked the charm of Newport News.

  He’s gone back to his roots and teaches philosophy courses to a group of several hundred former executives, bankers, lawyers, and people who worked in DC politics. Despite, or perhaps because of, the events related to the Ascendant, Glenn has found that his nihilism studies have captured a new audience.

  The people who study under him have faced immense hardships, as have all of us, but they’ve also seen fortunes tumble and power slip from their hands. Rather than turning towards established religions—some of which, like Buddhism and Judaism, have seen a huge increase in interested adherents—these people have embraced a philosophy of meaninglessness. The universe is random, death is inevitable and insignificant, and human intelligence is a quirk of nature.

  During my first conversation with Glenn, I asked him if this line of thinking was dangerous. He insisted it was not—that it was practical. However, he did not want to talk about his work and his new endeavor in the interview. (I suspect this is due to the fact that he is busily preparing a magnum opus, a massive volume on nihilism that he hopes to finish next year.) Instead, we spoke at length about the events leading up to the Finality and the turmoil inside the White House.

  The marketing pitch on the Ascendant and the Finality was smart.

  Most certainly too smart.

  President Ballard was impressed.

  This wasn’t exactly a good time either. The First Gentleman was in a medically induced coma and hanging on to life by a thread, and the country, for all intents and purposes, was in complete chaos.

  I’d seen chaos before—weathered all manner of insane political storms—but, of course, there was nothing that compared to the Elevation. It knew no race, no creed, no sex, and no political stripe. If you took one hundred random Americans and lined them up, thirty would be Elevated. Of those thirty, ten would die.

  And that wasn’t going to change.

  Doctors raced to try and find a cure for the Elevation or to reverse or at least halt its progression. But this thing, this biological code, wasn’t giving up its secrets easily. I talked to dozens of the world’s best biologists and virologists, and they said the same thing: The Elevation cannot be stopped.

  So we had to deal with it.

  By the end of the first month, the economy was in tatters.

  How can a country survive when its future is an open question mark? How do you bet on futures or make meaningful investments? What happened here happened everywhere, frankly. I’m old enough to remember runs on the banks—places like Venezuela, where the government teetered back and forth from socialist to dictatorial and back again. This was before the Elevation, mind you. Every time the currency fluctuated, people pulled their money out of their bank accounts. Stuffed it under their mattresses, maybe. A month after the Elevation, we were in the same exact situation. No one wanted to risk their money. Not with the world going to hell. Not with some strange condition turning people into . . . mystics or nutjobs.

  Infrastructure was also crumbling.

  Massive potholes were popping up in busy roads seemingly overnight. Bridges were buckling. I don’t think most Americans realize how much repair work is done on a daily basis in this country. If you don’t have teams of people out there cleaning and clearing, things get bogged up quickly. We’re talking sewage, rainwater, roads, trash removal, the whole nine yards. It’s a well-oiled machine, and when it seizes up . . . I don’t need to tell you: you saw what happened.

  So we hunkered down.

  While we deployed every asset we had—the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, everyone—those of us working on the messaging locked ourselves into the White House and got serious. Sarah Nagata delivered with her campaign and the President approved it. The trick was the rollout.

  People were losing faith out there, to tell the truth.

  We needed the President to talk directly to the people, to tell them what we knew and what we were going to do about it. I wrote President Ballard’s Disclosure address myself. And I’ve got to say, I’m pretty proud of it.

  Sarah Nagata had her finger on the Pulse, pardon the pun, of what people need. Not necessarily what they want, but what they need at a fundamental level. When faced with the terror of the cold, indifferent unknown, every single one of us reaches for the light. It is intrinsic to who and what we are.

  The point of the Disclosure message was
n’t information.

  It wasn’t about advancing science or explaining the code.

  It was about bringing people peace of mind.

  We had a story to tell and it had to be told right. Dahlia Mitchell, Dr. Xavier Faber—the whole Disclosure Task Force—did their jobs, and we applauded them for that. But at the end of the day, what did they determine? That the Ascendant were changing and killing us for no reason whatsoever. It was just happening like the way the snow falls or the clouds drift. Trust me, I know indifference. I was trained as a nihilist, I still practice what I currently teach, but at that moment the one thing the world needed was hope. We didn’t have answers, so we had to make them up. And I will push back to this day: How do you know we were wrong? It’s not like the Elevated have ever come back or communicated to tell us.

  No, the President and her administration did the right thing.

  The only thing.

  Think of how bad things could have gotten if we’d told the truth . . .

  37

  EXCERPT OF PRESIDENT VANESSA BALLARD’S DISCLOSURE ADDRESS

  BROADCAST TO THE NATION ON 12.03.2023

  Exactly one month after the Pulse was discovered, President Ballard spoke to the American public in an address broadcast on every national television, cable, satellite, radio, and online channel available.

  PRESIDENT BALLARD: Good evening. I know that my message tonight finds our country in disarray. We have encountered something that none of us could have prepared for but that all of us are now having to face directly.

  I know many of you have lost family members. Many of you are suffering from symptoms related to what doctors have dubbed the Elevation. This is surely one of the most trying times in our nation’s history, and I have been stunned by the amount of compassion and care that I have seen while traveling to meet with affected families and individuals. Our country has truly been blessed with benevolence.