Shortly after Tiberius’s remarks, scientists on television begin relaying these basic facts, and panic begins to ensue. Across the world, citizens ignore governmental curfew policies to get into their cars and out of coastal areas, filling up roads, many without cars even take to walking, as public transportation has been closed for the curfews.
In Washington D.C., President Neverian is being walked with his family onto a helicopter, Marine One on the South Lawn, for a short ride before getting on a plane, Air Force One, ironically to join the Vice President in West Virginia. There is a chance that Washington D.C. could be impacted by the tsunami, and so he is being moved to higher ground as a precaution, along with other key members of his Administration.
Now on the plane, he is sitting in an office with Attorney General Brian Braddock and a smattering of other advisors. An intelligence official hands him a document.
Reading it over, his face fills with disgust. “Jesus, the man is insane,” he says, tossing the paper onto the desk.
“What is it?” Braddock asks, reaching for it.
“Remember how I said to keep an eye on Wilson? That’s an email Wilson sent to his employees working in his new office towers, telling them to stay calm, it’s a bluff, and if they are worried, they can come with immediate families to seek shelter in the buildings, which are, what’s the quote? ‘Indestructible’?”
“Wow,” is all a puzzled Braddock can muster, leaning back in his chair, face in his palm, exhaling a long breath.
“And this man’s antics are responsible for this,” Neverian bellows. “I tell you what we are going to do. Leak it at 11:45 tomorrow morning. We’ll make sure the world sees how dangerous he is, and then rational heads will prevail.”
“I tell you, Mister President. It’s almost as if he acting so irrational as to undermine the legitimacy of those who want to wage war,” Braddock offers.
“Hmmm, now, that is interesting,” Neverian says.
Meanwhile, back in Jersey City, it’s about midnight, and Robert is feeling calm, better than he has in weeks, convinced he is set to accomplish his mission. Based on key card data, about two-thirds of employees have come to the office. Fortunately, several floors in this and most other towers aren’t fully occupied, as he built the towers to have capacity for Arbor Ridge to continue to grow, and there is also plenty of common space. It may not be comfortable, but there’s room for everyone who came.
Mark Morrison and Chris Bailey walk into his office. They’ve traded their trademark suits for untucked polos and jeans, or as Robert calls it, “the disheveled-woken-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night dad look.”
“So, I know we used excess concrete in these buildings, but I don’t think they were built to survive a tsunami?” Chris asks.
“Well, Chris, you know me well enough that I always keep an ace up my sleeve,” Robert says with a sheepish grin as he gets up out of his chair to open his secret elevator.
“You know, you could have told us about this part of the plan,” Mark says, more than a little peeved.
“Sorry, I had to keep this one close to the chest. You never know who’s listening.” Robert concedes as they get into the elevator to descend into Project Ridley.
“You know,” Chris says, “all these trips in a secret elevator behind a bookshelf to an underground lair has me feeling like we’re a bunch of superheroes.”
“I just hope we don’t end up being a bunch of supervillains,” Mark counters.
“Well, it’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose,” Robert says, as the elevators open and they head to his underground office.
Chapter 8
Jersey City
April 4, 2029
It’s 11:50 AM on the East Coast. Robert Wilson’s email to Arbor Ridge employees has indeed been leaked by President Nick Neverian’s Administration, and Robert is being blasted across cable news channels and social media as a megalomaniacal fool. How quickly public perception can turn! But Robert isn’t watching TV. He’s been working all night on the large computers connected to the black sphere in his underground office. Mark Morrison and Chris Bailey have gone back upstairs to be with their families; it’s not as though they could be of any use anyway. At 11:54 AM, Roberts emphatically bangs the “ENTER” key.
“Done.” And now, like everyone else, he waits.
Overnight, the spacecraft that had haunted Manhattan departed to make its way toward the moon. The moon lies nearly 250,000 miles from Earth, so the ship is no longer visible to the naked eye, having come to a rest about 1,000 miles from its target. But thanks to advancements in satellite and camera technology “invented” (on Earth at least) by Robert, ironically enough, humans are able to see a close up of the ship and the moon, though many in Asia have congregated outside to marvel at the moon one final time with the naked eye.
President Nick Neverian is watching from a control center in West Virginia. The layout is similar to his Situation Room in the now vacant White House, and he is seated at the head of a table watching a television. Only for the first time in this crisis, Vice President Victoria Larom is seated next to him. Neverian is exhausted, powered only by coffee and adrenaline. He’s even let his tie go crooked—unusual for a man so meticulously focused on his appearance.
All night, there have been conference calls with world leaders. He and Chinese President Li Macous have remained steadfast allies and have been pushing their fellow leaders to adopt their peace plan to stop the damage. With the exception of Russian President Mikhail Malvodov, most have become supportive of their plan. Given the deadline was not for thirty-six hours, and with so many leaders facing mass curfew violations and panic in coastal areas, they have decided to hold off on making any announcements until that evening so governments could first focus on keeping the domestic peace and controlling their populations.
In the minutes before the attack, the transport destroyer lines up at the moon. Its position between the Earth and the moon will ensure any debris, or in the very unlikely event of a miss, the laser blast itself will not directly harm the planet. An opening appears on one of the red spheres on which the ship appears to sit, and a long tube, at least fifty feet long, extends out. This must be the laser cannon that Admiral Tiberius had mentioned. Humanity can only wonder how this laser is powered.
It’s 11:59. Robert is still in his underground office. He is watching a live feed from the Arbor Ridge research facility on the moon. It is home to 847 employees right now. His leg is shaking rapidly; his arms are crossed and he’s biting his fingernails. “Can’t it be 12:01 already?” he thinks to himself as time slows to a crawl.
Then, it’s 12:00 PM in New York, and it’s 12:00 AM in Beijing, where a burst of yellow light across the night sky is visible. Then the entire sky turns brighter than day. There are shrill screams of panic. As the sky darkens, it becomes apparent—the moon is still there! First, there is confusion, but then cheers of joy.
In his makeshift control center, President Neverian and his advisors are equally baffled. What happened? Was it a bluff? Was there a malfunction, or did they miss? Would they try again? Hosts of the news channel on the TV are asking the same questions. Finally, they bring back the footage, using the satellite cameras, and slowing down the tape. First, viewers see the ship’s cannon emit a yellow ball of energy spiraling at the moon. But then about fifty miles above the moon’s surface, there is an explosion as it collides with something unseen by the naked human eye. The yellow ball of energy breaks up, sliding around the moon and disappearing into nothing.
At 12:10 PM, there is another flash of light across the night sky, but once again, the moon is still there. Again at 12:20, and once more at 12:30. Four tries, but the moon is still there. What was intended to display the League of Planets’s military supremacy instead proves to be a comical display of impotence. But how is the moon still there? All of humanity is wondering—or almost all.
Back in Jerse
y City, it’s nearly 1:00 PM, and Robert is relieved. His gamble has paid off. He’d been confident in his invention, but it had never been tested to this extent before. On one of his monitors, the livecam from Arbor Ridge’s moon base still plays. Robert notices that the transport destroyer is moving out of view. It has given up on trying to destroy the moon, likely set to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. With a frenetic energy but unwavering confidence, he starts typing away and after about thirty seconds, one again emphatically hits the “ENTER” key.
As he leans back in his chair, there is great rumbling throughout the basement floors and up through the entire tower. Employees and their families who had taken refuge in the tower hug each other tight, wondering if the building or the planet is under attack. Then the shaking stops. Those workers who are near the northeast corner point out the window at a sight that is a marvel to behold. The purple spire that extends 125 stories into the heavens is lit up and from the top a purple light shoots up into the sky. After a few moments, individuals throughout the building notice that wherever they look outside, there is just the slightest of purple tints, as though a veil has been draped over the building and to the ground.
Little do they know, but the same scene is playing out at each of the twelve towers Robert has built near Los Angeles; Vancouver, Canada; São Paulo, Brazil; Bogota, Colombia; London, England; Moscow, Russia; Cape Town, South Africa; Dubai; Sydney, Australia; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Tokyo, Japan. From each of them, a great purple light extended into the skies. It isn’t long before news channels in the United States and around the world are showing images of these buildings. Speculation is rampant as to what these buildings are doing, but there is no doubt that it has something to do with why the moon is still there and why the alien spaceship has yet to return to Midtown Manhattan.
In Neverian’s West Virginia compound, the room is as filled with speculation about Robert’s towers as is every living room in the country. It’s now nearly 2:30 PM; the towers have been shining for nearly ninety minutes, and there is still no definitive answer. Phone calls to Robert’s office have gone unanswered, and the President was not used to having his calls ignored. He has just gotten off the phone with his French counterpart who was pressing him for details. Was the U.S. government aware of what these towers could do? What exactly could they do?
Neverian answered quite honestly that he had no idea, but there was some skepticism among fellow world leaders that was actually the case. How could America’s leading defense contractor have developed what appears to be a weapon and not tell its government about it? Neverian had promised to get answers and to get them quickly. After all, the seventy-two-hour deadline continued to tick ever closer. In fact, a little over half an hour ago he had ordered the military to raid the Jersey City headquarters, get a hold of Robert, and figure out what exactly was going on.
The television in the Situation Room shows a live feed coming from Army Jeeps headed to the Arbor Ridge tower, which have just entered Jersey City. Neverian is at the head of the table, Vice President Larom is to one side and Attorney General Braddock on his other. Elsewhere at the table are an array of advisors. The military officials are manning the phones in constant contact with the convoy and supervising over the mission. The jeeps are three blocks from the tower’s entrance.
“Get your popcorn ready,” Neverian tells Braddock. And then one block from the towers, the jeeps crash to halt, slowing from thirty-five miles per hour to a stop in an instant. The feed shakes wildly as the suddenness of the stop causes the camera to move. Soldiers are thrown from the jeeps.
“What happened? Why did they stop?” bellows a confused, exasperated Neverian to his military advisors.
On the screen, several soldiers get out the jeeps and off the ground and walk, only to fall backwards midstride.
A general hangs up the phone and looks to Neverian, takes a breath to collect himself, like he knows he’s about to deliver deeply unsatisfactory news.
“Well, uh, Mister President, you see…”
“Get on with it, General,” the President interjects.
“The men on the ground are saying there is an, um…an invisible wall.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Neverian drops his head onto the table.
Suddenly there is the sound of a loud explosion coming from the screen. Neverian looks up and winces—a military helicopter is falling, engulfed in flames.
“Did someone shoot at our bird?” the President asks.
Relaying what he’s hearing on the phone from the troops on the ground, the general responds, “No, the helicopter was flying towards the tower before it too hit an invisible wall.”
“I don’t believe. I just don’t believe it.”
A few seconds later, a younger aide, looking as pale as a ghost, walks in and drops a note in front of Neverian, before scurrying out as quickly as possible.
“Oh no. Turn on the news! Any channel!” the President pleads.
Just as the note suggests, the networks are carrying video of the helicopter crashing as well as of troops, standing befuddled, in their crashed jeeps a block from their destination.
“Well done, everyone,” Neverian says, “you’ve made me look like a moron in front of the whole world.”
“To be honest, Mister President, you did that all yourself the second you let a random citizen be a stronger force for freedom than you were willing to be,” Vice President Larom says before getting out of her seat and walking out of the room. She heads into her office, a small room in the complex, to start calling friends on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, about 40,000 miles above Earth, Admiral Tiberius is sitting in his office, a windowless room, ten feet by twelve feet. On the wall behind his desk, he has photos from throughout his career, many with Frozos himself, as well as metals and awards, recognizing the valor of a successful career. He keeps replaying what happened in his attack on the moon, but he never had seen anything like it. At the same time, he has been briefed on the happenings on Earth and lights coming out of towers. The ship’s systems are registering some sort of interference about 1,000 miles away, and he had sent out a drone to investigate, only for the drone to crash like that helicopter had.
More than anything, Tiberius feels disgusted. He has had an incredibly successful career and is a leading member of the League of Planets’s military. He has overseen the successful invasion of twenty-seven planets and been at Frozos’s right hand for three decades. He’s due for retirement, and this was to be his last mission. This mission was supposed to be a simple task; instead it is turning into a problem of his own making. Frozos had been priming Earth for a peaceful takeover for more than ten years.
All Tiberius was supposed to do was arrive, perhaps show off his ship, and accept the terms of surrender. He didn’t even bring other ships necessary to take the planet by force, because that was conceived as being out of the realm of possibility. After accepting the surrender, Frozos had agreed Tiberius would retire from active duty and he was to remain on Earth as its Governor. Now he had to explain to Frozos that he needed more troops. Tiberius was dreading this conversation; Frozos never took news of failure particularly well.
Tiberius taps a button on his desk to establish a video connection with Frozos. Thanks to hologram technology, Frozos appears standing in front of Tiberius’s desk. Tiberius jumps to alert from his seat.
“Sit down, Admiral. I’ve been informed you don’t have good news to share.”
“No, sir. There appears to be a force field of some kind; we’ve seen nothing like it before. It protected the moon from our laser cannons, and now we are blocked outside the planet’s atmosphere.”
“How could this happen?”
“I think we’ve been betrayed by an advance scout. It’s the only plausible explanation. I am deeply sorry, sir.”
Frozos paces angrily across the room. The infiltration program had been his brainch
ild, and it had worked very successfully in recent years, speeding up the capture of planets. But those advance missions had been shorter—only one to three years on average. On Earth, and on planets central to the next phase of his expansion dreams, scouts had been sent over a decade in advance. He worries that what’s occurring today on Earth could signal trouble elsewhere, and Frozos could not afford failures that would give his enemies fodder that it was time for a change atop the League Council.
“Okay, Tiberius, hold firm. My armada should be there in days.”
It’s now nearly 5:00 PM in Jersey City. Robert stands in his office, shirt collar popped up, putting on a red tie, fielding last minute advice from Mark and Chris, who are back in their standard suit/no-tie combo. Both men are glad that they keep spare clothes in the office, though they really hadn’t quite envisioned this scenario. Robert has asked every network for several minutes of airtime to discuss what exactly is shooting out of Arbor Ridge towers. Originally, there was reluctance from some network executives to give him airtime, but then Mark threatened they would air it exclusively on Headlines Now, the news channel Robert had bought last year. The fear of losing all their viewers—after all, the entire world wondered what was going on—caused them to capitulate.
Robert’s office is rearranged into a makeshift television studio, with cameras set up in front of his desk. A teleprompter has also been set up with the outline of Robert’s prepared remarks. He will give this address sitting down.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Chris leans in to help Robert get his tie perfectly straight. “Don’t worry, you’ll do great,” he says.
“What do you think of the speech, Mark?” Robert asks as he puts his suit jacket on, straightening his American flag lapel pin.
Robert Wilson and the Invasion from Within Page 6
