Wherever Seeds May Fall (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  The clock on the far wall reads 10:27 am. Andy’s got to be in court by noon. As much as he wants to press on, he’s pushed for time and that frustrates him. If he’s not out of the house in the next ten to fifteen minutes, he won’t make it downtown in time.

  “Damn it!” he says, slamming his fist on the table. “Don’t believe their lies. They’ll tell you these creatures come in peace, but how do they know? I’m telling you, peace only comes from the end of a sword—out of the barrel of a gun. That’s a universal truth.”

  Andy stands, leaning forward and pressing his fists against the table as he screams at the camera, “They will not replace us! Do you hear me? They will not. They won’t take my guns or my freedom. America, the real America, the heartland won’t allow it!”

  As the minute hand moves toward the half-hour mark, Andy grabs the sheet of paper, crumpling it into a ball as he yells, “This is our country. Our world. Nobody tells us what to do, goddamn it!”

  He throws the paper aside in disgust, turning back to the camera and staring down the lens.

  “No surrender! Never. Not in America. This is the land of the free, baby.”

  And with that, he steps back, saying, “This is Angry Andy Anderson for Truth@War, signing off.”

  Immediately, the computer algorithm running his online show cuts away to a bunch of ads. Eventually, the system will switch back to a collection of relevant rants. The entire show is available online and rebroadcast at strategic times throughout the day, catering to the needs of his audience.

  Andy walks away from the desk. He opens the door, stepping from his studio into the kitchen. It’s as though he’s passing between worlds, stepping from one reality to another. He forces himself to leave his anger behind. In the real world, he’s a shell of the bluster in his show. Andy feels the hypocrisy, but he ignores that weight. He’s got to keep his guard up. If he admits he’s anything less than righteous, his world would crumble.

  Admiral Jacobsen

  The first thing that strikes Nolan about the Pentagon is the sheer number of parking lots surrounding the building.

  As his driver swings around to the south entrance, Nolan realizes that’s not the half of it. Thousands of cars line an area the size of a dozen football fields. If he worked here, he’d pace around it out of curiosity. The main parking lot seems to stretch well beyond a quarter-mile. To anyone watching him walk around the lot, his interest would seem strangely bizarre. For Nolan, such mundane acts are a coping mechanism—a way of dealing with anxiety. After waking refreshed this morning in a local hotel, he’s already feeling exhausted. Somehow, he’s got to find his rhythm outside of his regular routine.

  The driver notices Nolan staring out across the wrong side of the road.

  “That’s the Pentagon there, sir,” the driver says, directing his gaze to the other side of the access way. They pull up in front of the three-story complex.

  Nolan’s never been predictable. He doesn’t do obvious. His specialty is the obscure. As he’s nervous about meeting Admiral Jacobsen from the Joint Chiefs, he does a little arithmetic to calm himself.

  Forty to fifty cars per row. Ten to twenty rows in this lot. By his estimate, there are ten to fifteen parking lots scattered around the Pentagon. That’s roughly six thousand cars, possibly as many as eight thousand. Given parking spots are always at a premium, being reserved for the upper ranks, the Pentagon must house at least thirty thousand people. And he has to find just one.

  “Is everything okay, sir?”

  “Umm, yes. Fine.”

  The driver pulls up and Nolan gets out. His initial impression of the Pentagon is someone got the plans wrong—they built a skyscraper lying on its side. The width of the building is impressive, and he can only see one side of it. This face alone must be close to a thousand feet in length. He walks up the broad outside stairs, being dwarfed by the building.

  Inside, he passes through a security checkpoint that includes a bag scan and a metal detector.

  “Can I help you?” PFC Jones says from behind a broad reception desk.

  “I’m here to see Admiral Jacobsen.”

  “Department of the Navy. Take corridor two. Third floor. A Ring. Room A3505.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nolan feels better. He loves specific detail. He’s been directed with military precision. He marches along the broad marble corridor. Polished wooden panels reach up to waist height, running along the walls. The corridor is lined with memorabilia. There are paintings, flags, and display cases filled with the artifacts of war. He’s at home.

  Nolan walks into room A3505 with a spring in his step.

  “Hi, Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis from NORAD to see Admiral Jacobsen.”

  “Okay,” a helpful enlisted sailor says from behind a reception desk. “You’ll need to go to the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Take corridor four. Second floor. E Ring. Room E2122.”

  “Thank you.”

  The novelty of being in the Pentagon helps Nolan keep his enthusiasm high as he navigates the endless corridors. After a few minutes, he enters room E2122.

  “Hi, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis from NORAD to see Admiral Jacobsen.”

  “I’m sorry,” yet another enlisted soldier says from behind yet another reception desk. “Looking at the admiral’s schedule, he’s working out of Fleet Operations today. Take corridor seven to B Ring. First floor. Room B1057.”

  Nolan stands there for a moment, staring down at the young soldier. It’s not this man’s fault, he tells himself. After an awkward few seconds, he thanks him, turns and heads for the next room.

  Walking into Fleet Operations, Nolan already knows what he’s about to hear, but he goes through the motions anyway.

  “Hi, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis from NORAD to see Admiral Jacobsen.”

  “I’m sorry,” a young woman in a navy uniform says. Nolan pinches his eyes shut. Far from being in orderly heaven, he’s found himself in bureaucratic hell. She continues, so he opens his eyes and fakes a smile. “The admiral isn’t here today. If you go to the main office of the Department of the Navy, they’ll be able to help.”

  The pressure is rising inside Nolan. In perfect unison with the sailor in front of him, he says, “Corridor two. Third floor. A Ring. Room A3505.”

  “Hey, how did you know that?” she asks, cocking her head sideways.

  “I’ve already been there. They sent me to the Joint Chiefs. Who sent me here.”

  “Oh, the admiral is normally here on Tuesdays, but normal is becoming more and more abnormal these days.”

  “Understood. Thanks,” Nolan says, bottling up his frustration as he leaves.

  Rather than marching along the corridors back to room A3505, Nolan’s shoes drag a little. He’s getting a glimpse into how difficult it is to get anything done at the Pentagon. No one thought to call ahead and check. Everyone’s been polite and helpful without actually helping at all. Time is being wasted.

  “Back again,” Nolan says as he walks into room A3505.

  “Umm, you were looking for Admiral Jacobsen, right? He’s—”

  “Could you check?” Nolan asks, firmly but politely cutting off the receptionist.

  The silence that follows is tense, but Nolan’s finished with his tour of the Pentagon. The sailor clicks god-knows-what on a computer positioned so only he can see the screen.

  “Do you have an appointment scheduled with the admiral?”

  As much as Nolan hates to admit it, he doesn’t. He simply hopped on a plane and came to Washington as ordered.

  “I’m here at the admiral’s request,” Nolan says. “General Cooper from NORAD sent me.”

  “Have you spoken to General Cooper this morning?”

  Nolan breathes deeply. This is a standard-issue military response. Oh, so someone else is involved? Wonderful. Go and annoy them. Grrrr.

  Nolan ignores the question.

  “Can you find the admiral and let him know I’m here?”


  The sailor looks back at his computer screen and says, “I can’t just call him.” He taps furiously at his keyboard. “His personal assistant says he’s in a meeting at the White House.”

  Nolan’s anxiety spikes.

  “Can you send him a message?” he asks. “Passing it through his PA?”

  “And he’ll know who you are?” the man asks.

  “Oh, yes. He’ll know. We spoke yesterday.”

  “Understood, sir. Please take a seat.”

  Begrudgingly, Nolan walks over to a bench seat. He sits there, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his sweaty hands together. The sailor at reception confers with a colleague and disappears into a back office. After a few minutes, a captain comes out.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Landis?” he asks.

  Nolan gets to his feet. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t reach Admiral Jacobsen at the moment. Perhaps you would like to make an appointment?”

  Nolan is frustrated. “Could you please just get a message to him? I’m here at his request.”

  “I can’t promise the message will get through.”

  Nolan hands the captain a business card, saying, “Here are my contact details.”

  “I’ll pass these along,” the captain says, handing the card to the receptionist who immediately begins typing up the information.

  “Thank you.”

  With that, Nolan leaves. Once he’s out in the corridor, he realizes he doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s got nowhere to go. He could head around to the Air Force wing and get a visitor’s certificate sent over from NORAD, but he’s a spare wheel. Back in Colorado, Nolan has both a position and a place inside the grinding military machine. Here, he’s a stranger—a straggler. Nolan feels lost. He walks on blindly. There’s got to be a cafeteria around here somewhere. Coffee. Coffee would be good. Even military-grade sludge.

  His cell phone rings. Unlisted number.

  “Landis,” he says, answering the call.

  “Where the hell are you?” is the reply.

  “Admiral Jacobsen! I’m in the Pentagon, just down from your office.”

  “Why the blazes aren’t you here at the White House?”

  With those few words, Nolan feels his heart sink.

  The admiral continues. “We’ve been waiting for you all morning.”

  “Me?”

  “Get your ass over here!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The phone goes dead, and it’s then it hits him—nothing’s changed. Nolan still has no idea where to go beyond some vague notion of a location. Exactly where is the admiral within the White House? Nolan’s sure he’ll get there and be run around again. He’ll bounce between junior staffers, trapped in some bizarre form of bureaucratic purgatory.

  He pinches his eyes shut, muttering, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” to the dismay of those walking by. All he can do is try, but he already knows what’ll happen. He’ll get lots of polite but utterly futile help from people who have absolutely no idea.

  Footsteps pound down the marble corridor behind him. Nolan turns, seeing the Navy captain looking wide-eyed. He’s got a cell phone in his hand.

  “You got it?” he asks. “You got the call?”

  “Yes,” Nolan says, on the verge of laughing at the insanity of his predicament. He’s still no wiser than he was an hour ago. How can he actually find the admiral?

  “I’ll take you over there,” the captain says, and Nolan’s face lights up. “This way.”

  Finally.

  They jump into an elevator and descend into the basement of the Pentagon. The captain explains, “There’s a private subway between here and the White House. I can have you there in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “Awesome,” Nolan says. “And you know where we’re going, right? I mean, you know exactly where we’re going within the White House, yeah?”

  “Yes. Admiral Jacobsen is meeting with the communications director in the West Wing. He’s waiting for you there.”

  There’s silence between them as the elevator descends.

  Yes!

  If Nolan wasn’t in dress uniform, he’d perform a fist pump.

  “Is he normally this stressed?”

  The captain laughs. “Oh, you caught the admiral on a good day.”

  Finally, Nolan can relax. The door to the elevator opens and the captain waves him out onto the platform, jogging to a subway car. A uniformed officer holds the doors open. Nolan’s phone rings again. He sits on a plush velvet seat and answers as the train pulls away from the underground station.

  “Landis here.”

  “Where are you?” a woman’s voice asks.

  “I—umm. I’m on a train. In the subway. Heading to the White House.”

  “Everyone’s been going insane over here trying to find you.”

  “Ah, who is this?” Nolan asks.

  “Kath.”

  “Dr. McKenzie?”

  “Yes. The communications director gave me your number.”

  Nolan hates this. The stress is killing him.

  “Hey, you were right,” she says, but she’s far too cheerful.

  “About what?”

  “Comet An̆duru. Running the clock back, I found it passed within about two million miles of Neptune. Given the planets were separated by almost two billion miles, that’s damn close. As we’re working with poor data, that’s within my margin for error.”

  “What are you saying?” Nolan asks.

  “It could have grazed the ice giant,” Dr. McKenzie replies, getting to the point. She adds, “What are the odds?”

  “What indeed?” Nolan asks, happy to be reminded of why he’s here in Washington. For a moment there, wandering the corridors of the Pentagon, he’d lost all sense of purpose.

  “Yeah, and it gets better,” Dr. McKenzie says. “Having two data points gives me a lot more to go on. So An̆duru skims Neptune, presumably conducting a similar braking maneuver, and then heads on to Saturn, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But that means it bypasses Uranus. This tells us something about the range of motion available to An̆duru. The angle of deflection coming off Saturn was 7 degrees. If we assume that’s a nominal value for that speed—a comfortable maneuver—then we have learned something valuable about An̆duru. We’re getting a feel for its structural limits. We can use that to figure out the region this thing came from.”

  “Okay?” Nolan replies, but his voice betrays the fact he’s not quite following her.

  “Imagine an archery target or a paper target at a gun range. Lots of concentric circles. Everyone’s trying to hit the bullseye, but most people miss, hitting some of those outer rings, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, we’ve got a lousy grouping. Our shots are all over the place. If we trace An̆duru’s approach on a paper target, we can visualize the planets being on the concentric circles with the sun as the bullseye. Neptune’s on the outside. Closer in, we’ve got a bullet hole for Uranus and then Saturn. Closer still there’s a hole for Jupiter, then Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury.”

  “Okay?” Nolan replies.

  Lights flicker past in the tunnel outside.

  “This is where it gets interesting. An̆duru goes from Neptune to Saturn, skipping Uranus entirely. Why? Because Uranus is too far forward in its orbit. An̆duru’s tracing a smooth curve as it dives into our solar system, curling in toward us. It’s only intersecting with the planets that align with its approach.”

  “I don’t get it,” Nolan says.

  “It’s following the most efficient path to shed its speed relative to the sun,” Dr. McKenzie says. “When it passes Jupiter, it won’t make for Mars. Like Uranus, Mars isn’t on the right path.”

  “But Earth?” Nolan asks, aware she’s leading him to this conclusion.

  “A turn of just 8 degrees,” she says. “We’re in the firing line.”

  “So it’s coming for us?”

  “So it could com
e for us,” Dr. McKenzie says, correcting him. “We won’t know for sure until An̆duru passes Jupiter, but it’s a reasonable assumption, consistent with what we’ve seen so far.”

  The subway car comes to a halt. The doors slide open.

  “We’re here,” the captain says.

  “I’m downstairs,” Nolan says.

  “You’re missing the point,” Dr. McKenzie says. “It’s not just that we know where it’s going. We know roughly where it came fr—”

  “I’ll be right there,” Nolan says, cutting her off.

  He hangs up and rushes after the captain, who says, “This way.”

  They take an elevator to the foyer of the Eisenhower Executive Office and pass through a security checkpoint. To get to the White House, the two men have to cross a parking lot. All the guards are facing outward, looking away from them. They’re inside the main security cordon but still under the watchful eye of Marines in parade dress. Soldiers stand at attention beside various doorways with loaded weapons. They’re guarding the interconnected buildings surrounding the White House.

  “Over here,” the captain says. He leads Nolan to the West Wing entrance and through another security checkpoint.

  “Captain James Banner,” he says, showing his credentials to the guard. “I’m escorting Lieutenant Colonel Landis to Admiral Jacobsen in the communications director’s office.”

  The duty officer scans their IDs, recording information about their movement within the security zone. After a quick call, the officer admits them.

  “Down here,” the captain says, leading him to a room along a side corridor. He stops and knocks.

  “Enter.”

  The captain opens the door, gesturing for Nolan to go in.

  Dr. McKenzie is standing in front of a whiteboard. She’s taller than she appears in her online profile. With vast, sweeping arcs, she’s drawn a rough outline of the solar system, complete with the position of the planets and the approach of Comet An̆duru.

  Admiral Jacobsen is leaning on a desk. General Chalmers, the Chief of Staff for the Air Force, is sitting on a filing cabinet. The communications director is in his seat, but he has swiveled to face Dr. McKenzie, leaving his computer screen unlocked behind him. Nolan barely notices the slight figure of a woman sitting on the windowsill. She’s relaxed, partially obscured by the admiral and the general.