by Vincent Pet
Brad was stunned for a moment as his face went blank.
“You’re alright?”
Brad stared accusingly at Barker. His eyes were on fire.
“You sent Bob to Mars knowing well that he might encounter aliens shot down by us? Are you mad?”
Barker face was unyielding.
“We had no choice. Mars was the next logical step into space for us. We had to go before China sent their mission. At that time, we thought we were in a race with them to get there first and we couldn’t let fear damper our ambition. We thought we took the necessary precautions. We even flew over the anomaly but we couldn’t find any presence of life. The landing site was considered safe, very far away from the facial anomaly.”
“Did Bob know about the aliens?”
Barker shook his head. Negative.
Brad was having a hard time picturing his childhood friend ending his life in front of a monstrosity he was unprepared for. It simply wasn’t fair. Bob always prided in having a game plan, of having an option, of being prepared to face whatever adversity threw at him. They never gave him a chance though. They never told him what he could have expected up there.
Barker’s voice continued as Brad stared into his hands, closed into a fist, almost as if he were praying…or ready to smash the table underneath in anger.
“Ted Louis knew what they could find even if he truly didn’t believe it. He was a deeply religious man, you know; which is one of the reason we chose him. If you don’t believe that something exists, how can that something worry you? We knew we could depend on him to carry his tasks without any accumulation of stress. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to accept that God had created an intelligent species outside of man.”
Brad nodded, finally understanding the cause of the remaining astronaut’s suicide. They had found Ted dead in the capsule after splashdown. He had apparently suffered survivor’s guilt and killed himself on re-entry but Barker now implied otherwise.
“So what happens now? We wait around for the aliens to return? That can be a very long wait. At least it will give us time to evolve our defenses in case we’re attacked.”
Brad was irritated and tired and it was starting to show….but, the face…if they drew a face on Mars, they probably knew the next crew was coming soon, if they weren’t already here! Barker’s next words confirmed his thoughts.
“Unfortunately, they might already be here.”
Barker cleared his throat and resumed the account.
“As you know, China is interested in building a base on the dark side of the moon. They have been sending probes lately to survey the surface. We have intercepted an image from the last probe they sent. They have found an alien cargo ship in a stationary orbit. As you might imagine, they have not communicated with us nor have we said anything about this interception. The fact remains that the alien presence is present as we speak, not only on Mars, but much closer to us. We have no idea how long it has been there. It could have been there since last century; or maybe it just arrived. Perhaps it is not manned. Perhaps it is the mother ship of the 1947 crew we think have been stranded on Mars. Or maybe, at this very moment we speak, aliens are on Earth taking away our resources behind our backs. Although I have to admit, they had the capability to take whatever they needed without us ever knowing about it; but they didn’t in the past. This must mean that at least they must respect some sort of law when dealing with other races.”
Barker sighed as he leaned forward.
“Then, there is another possibility.”
Brad questioning gaze urged Barker to complete his analysis.
“They are dealing with China.”
Barker left the phrase open, as if it had a continuation. Brad quickly anticipated his thoughts.
“…and if they were willing to give us secrets of the atomic bomb, then what secrets are they willing to give China?”
Barker leaned back and nodded, apparently impressed.
“Let me worry about that, Walsh, but in the meantime, your job is to formulate a protocol we can use to communicate with these aliens. I want an in depth analysis of every possible situation we can expect. I want to know how we should prepare for each eventuality. How will they act after we shot down and killed an entire crew? What can we do to make peace? If we go to war, what can we expect? What happens if the public finds out? Must we tell the population? In short, we need options. We already have plans, but we want your input, Walsh. No hypothesis must be discarded, even the most improbable. I want us to be prepared for anything, I repeat, anything that might happen.”
Barker rose to his feet.
“Gentlemen. I think we have said enough for today. Walsh is tired and will need time to absorb all this.”
During the next few months, Brad found himself in a surreal environment that had little to do with the world outside. There was no concept of time at the base. Work was the only constant which drove their existence. Meetings were scheduled at any time of the day or night. It was exhausting and at times Brad wondered how anybody managed to remain sane. When he finally did return home to his family, he had very little to say. They had given him a script to memorize. He had no intention though, of saying more than was necessary to maintain the lie.
The year passed by uneventfully. There was much tension and speculation about China as they stepped up their space program to build the permanent base on the dark side of the moon. Officially, the base represented a launch pad to the planets, as China was looking not only to explore Mars but to eventually send a manned spacecraft to Jupiter’s moons. The US also announced that they would be building a similar outpost, albeit an orbiting station around the moon, which irritated China as it accused the Americans of spying. It was a game of cat and mouse, with each side not knowing what the other side knew, if anything, about the aliens. Could it be that China simply stumbled upon the alien ship? Highly unlikely since the ship was in a position that would make detection nearly impossible unless one knew where to look.
Barker summed it up best.
“They knew exactly where to find that ship. They could have sent a thousand missions up there and never found it. I just have this gut feeling that the aliens are working with them and that’s why they never came back to us.”
Brad was not at all convinced of this partnership with China. Certainly China knew of the aliens and in the best of worlds the two nations would get together to share this knowledge. The US though, did not want to let China know that there were cracks in their ultra-sophisticated encrypted communication codes which had enabled them to get the sensitive information. The US had spent many years and efforts to get a foot in China’s military and political system and understandably they were not about to put their whole organization in jeopardy when the situation was so ambiguous.
“There is only one thing I can think of,” Barker told him. “They are building a base to get to the planets and the aliens are helping them build this base…or, even better, they will help them build an interstellar engine. China will get to the stars before anyone else does and if they do, it will be the end of America and our allies. The question is: what have the aliens asked in return? Would China be as tough on the aliens as we were? Or will China let them walk all over us?”
Brad worked his last month at the base trying to juggle the various lines of thoughts. Were the aliens among them? What were their intentions? If so, why didn’t they communicate? What was China’s role, if any? They had too many questions, but not enough answers to satisfy even one of them. Brad was finally reassigned to a government agency in his city where he continued his work for the government, even if it had nothing to do with Area 51 anymore.
Two years passed. Not a day went by when Brad didn’t think about his experience at Area 51. He had a secret to guard for the rest of his life and at times, it became unsupportable. More often than not, when he watched the news and the mindless killings among people, he became livid; so much so that he had to take long walks outside to calm himself down.
The alien threat had altered his idea of humanity. He and everyone else associated with Area 51 knew how fragile the world was and in that fragility, they had learnt to appreciate every aspect of being human. To see people kill each other and destroy the very life they had a privilege of sharing with one another was not only horrible to Brad, but shameful and unforgivable. That a person could think of ending another life was unpardonable, obscene. The world though did not know how fragile humanity really was and Brad could not tell them.
At times, he closed his eyes while sitting on the porch and reenacted the mission to Mars in his mind, trying to imagine the astronauts last moments. It was almost as if he could see the details. He could see Bobby staring into those murky deep brown eyes of something alien. The fear, the thrill, the pain, and death must have all happened in the blink of an eye. He imagined 1947 and the panic and confusion that must have reigned just before the order to shoot down the UFO was given. He tried to imagine the whereabouts of the aliens at that moment, but his mind refused to tread into his nightmares. He hoped the cargo ship that had been found around the moon was on some sort of autopilot and had been abandoned. He hoped that the aliens were far away and would never come back during his lifetime. He hoped that if they ever did show up, man would be able to meet them as equals and drive them away from the planet if necessary.
At the end of that second year, Brad was contacted again. He found Dora waiting in his office. She was simply breathtaking.
“I hope you didn’t forget old friends, Brad.”
Brad didn’t miss a beat.
“Funny you’re here. Isn’t this the moment where Walter Bonk usually appears?”
Dora was tense though. In the year that he had spent at Area 51, he had developed a very close relationship with her. There were certain moments where he had come close to becoming involved with her and had stepped back just as he was about to fall off the precipice. He couldn’t do it to his family, especially to his wife who had suffered greatly through the whole ordeal. They had almost lost their relationship during that year. He wasn’t even sure if his wife had remained loyal to him that year but they had managed to remain together in spite of the separation and temptations to leave. Nevertheless, even though they had rebuilt their lives, at times, he wondered if the best choice had been made…especially now, with Dora in his sight. He realized at that moment just how much he had missed her presence.
“Brad, you are coming with me to Area 51. We leave now. Phone your wife and tell her that there is an important business meeting in Las Vegas. Tell her you will be back in three to four days.”
Brad sensed the urgency in her voice.
“Something has happened, right?”
A few hours later, Brad was back at Area 51, just like that after two long years. Nothing had changed and this somehow reassured him that the world had not passed him by. He was led to that same room he had first seen on that day which had forever changed his perspective on the world. Only this time, Barker and Height were already present, impatiently waiting for him. They greeted each other warmly. Barker, as usual, didn’t waste any time.
“Walsh, they’re back. They made contact with us two days ago. We have a meeting scheduled at one this morning. That only leaves us a few hours. We tried to postpone it to give ourselves more time, but our request was turned down. The vice president will be here tonight. In fact, most of the military big guns will be here in the next few hours along with quite a few important people from Washington. Personally, I don’t believe it’s wise to concentrate so many important people in one place, but there is little I can do about it. Your job will be to observe the exchange and fill your report afterwards. By the way, a detailed version of the events of 1947 you prepared two years ago were relayed to them.”
Brad nodded. It was better to clear any misunderstanding of past events as early as possible. The aliens would find that much had changed on Earth through the past hundred years.
“Walsh, there is something else about these aliens which changes our perspective on who they are and where they came from. We don’t have the time for small talk, so I’ll be quick and to the point. By looking at the stars on some of the maps they had in the spaceship we recovered, we noted that at times the stars were not where one would expect them to be and that others, quite frankly, didn’t even exist. We thought we were looking at the star system of another galaxy similar to our own, but we weren’t. It probably took us too much time to figure it out, but we are now certain that we are dealing with a space and time traveling species. Furthermore, we are fairly certain they are travelling through time on our own world and apparently, by looking at the star systems, very far into the future. We have intercepted two further messages from China on the subject in these past years which show the aliens reach on our world. One message referred to The Nine Chapters of the Mathematical Art, compiled around 200 BC during the Han dynasty in China. What is particular about this book is that it introduces negative numbers for the first time in human history and the message we intercepted clearly indicates that this knowledge is credited to an exchange between aliens and the rulers of that time in China.”
Brad’s mind was fragmented as he struggled with the concept. Barker continued.
“The second interception refers to a location of a spaceship. This is definitely the cargo ship hidden behind the moon that China found a few years back. This communication also pointed out that this was the eighth prediction hidden in the eighth chapter of the nine chapter book which came true. Therefore, if eight of the nine predictions are correct, there is no reason left to doubt that the ninth prediction will not happen. We have no idea what the ninth prediction is since the encrypted Chinese message makes no further reference to this except...”
Barker gulped, uncharacteristically of him, as if what he was about to say terrified even him.
“Except with an ending line that says…God help us all. China is not even a religious state, Walsh, so to use that sort of language to end such a sensitive message is stunning to say the least.”
Brad shook his head as the information slowly sank in. For some reason, he wasn’t concerned too much about what China knew at the moment, but at the capability the aliens possessed to travel through space and time at will. He gaped at both Height and Barker as he became focused.
“If what you say is true…then they are shaping events as they wish! No, it can’t be…”
As the full impact of the concept hit Brad, he shuddered inside.
“If time traveling exists and if they are traveling through our time, then man has been unable to stop them! I cannot imagine a future generation of mankind allowing aliens to go back and forth so easily and risk contaminating the past and changing their own present…”
They glanced at each other with gloom apprehension as the possibility crossed their minds. Height finally broke the silence.
“It might very well be true, but since we don’t know the future, there is not much we can do at this moment but concentrate on our own time. It could very well be we are at war with them in this hypothetical future and that we lost…or that we won and now they are trying to change our past. It could very well be that China is somehow in it with them through this process but the last message we intercepted seems to indicate that they are just as helpless as we are. They undoubtedly have knowledge of the future which we don’t have and in the past they could have gained advantage from this if, as they imply, eight of the nine predictions came true. Then again, the entirety of The Nine Chapters of the Mathematical Art book containing the riddles was discovered in China by archaeologists only in 1983. It was written on bamboo sticks and whatever knowledge might have been gained beforehand was buried for centuries before it came to light so whatever predictions were made might not have garnered any advantage to China. Unfortunately, we don’t have any details and whatever we conjure up can only be pure speculation. The only way to clear our uncertainties is if the President steps in and has an honest one on one talk with his Chi
nese counterpart.”
Height threw a hard look at Barker. It was obvious to Brad that the two had a fundamental difference of view. While Height was in favor of revealing what the intelligence community had intercepted in order to shed light on what they knew and combine their resources against a possible common threat, Barker was stoically opposed. He was not willing to put his faith in a presumable enemy country he considered more of a long term threat to their national security than the sudden predicament they were in at that moment even if it involved aliens.
The wait seemed long for all of them but the rendezvous hour finally arrived as the alien’s spaceship appeared out of the sky at the indicated time. The army had scrambled up helicopters and fighter jets to confuse all possible witnesses who could have been watching from outside Area 51. With all the lights and sounds over the base, anyone spying would have concluded that the military was testing a new aircraft. Brad was as taut as everyone else around him. The spaceship was similar to the one the military had shot down and which Brad had seen only once; locked away in a high security area deep underground. The ship reminded Brad much of what the classic UFO sightings were described as, circular with a sort of elongated top and bulky mid-section. Once the rather small, compact ship landed, the five hominid aliens that descended only advanced a few steps from their craft and remained immobile facing them. Brad was the furthest removed from the landing site and it was difficult for him to see clearly since the aliens were bathed in a bright bluish light emitting from the spaceship behind their backs. Again, Brad thought, it was very much in line with what people witnessed when they had a an encounter of the third kind with a UFO. Then to Brad’s sudden surprise one of the aliens spoke. He couldn’t tell which one, but the words were very clear, crisp and loud with a metallic ring to them. He hadn’t expected such ease in communication, especially when they had been led to believe it had been very arduous during the early part of the twentieth century.
