BAD RAIN: A SCI-FICTION THRILLER

by Michael Mazzarelli

  After the introductions the president asked everyone to be seated. Time was getting short and he wanted to give some last minute instructions. “The leader of the spaceship, E-1, in orbit near our moon has called for this briefing. He says everything will be explained at this meeting. I want everyone to listen to what he has to say, but do not speak. I will answer any questions if he asks any. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll ask General Stormer to respond on behalf of his team that has been investigating the alien space crafts activities in central Florida. No one is to ask or answer any questions unless I mention your name and ask for a response.”

  The closer the sixth hour approached, the quieter the room became. The reality that they were about to hear from an alien life form started to set in and each individual contemplated the event quietly and in his or her own way.

  Six hours to the second after the alien had made first contact with the President of the United States the speakerphone in the center of the conference room rang as if a call to arms had sounded. The ring broke the silence like shattering glass in an echo chamber, bouncing off the walls and around the room. A second ring echoed out as the group just stared at the speaker like it was the alien itself. It seemed an eternity before the president pushed the speakerphone’s button and said hello.

  A voice with a slight accent announced in somewhat broken English, “I assume you have had enough time to gather everyone.”

  The president responded, “Yes, everyone important to the matter is sitting in this room. Your voice is being amplified over a speakerphone so everyone can hear. We do have video conferencing available, if you wish to see us or allow us to see you.”

  The speaker echoed again, “This will be fine for now. My name is E-1 and I’m the leader of an exploration spaceship from Quadrant 2525 in the far edge of your solar system, as you know it. We were heading to section 257 of Quadrant 4066 when we were hit unexpectedly by an asteroid and started losing power. We knew we couldn’t make it to our destination so we stopped, repaired our ship, and then searched for a method to replenish our power. Your planet was ideal, so we arrived here seventy of your years ago and established orbit around your sun. I say your years because to us it was only a short time ago, our years roughly twenty of yours.

  “We knew back then that you did not have the capabilities of seeing us this far from your planet. Over the years, as you improved your telescopes and other capabilities, eventually discovering us, we gambled you would assume we were just a small planet you hadn’t yet discovered. For the past few years, we have built robot Collector ships so we could send them to your planet and collect your lightning, which in turn is used to replenish our power supply. We did not want to interfere with the evolution of your species, so we equipped our Collectors with illusion shields. Up until a few days ago we hadn’t had a problem with our project of restoring power through your lightning. That all ended when we detected that one of our Collector ships was missing.

  “We alerted our defense ship of the problem, but then we lost contact with both a second Collector ship and the pilot of the defense ship. My exploration spaceship is very close to being back to full power and we couldn’t risk the loss of any more Collectors. This is why we decided reluctantly to reveal our presence. We knew you couldn’t harm our spaceship, so we moved out of orbit and approached your planet. When we were close enough, we decided to block your communications for two reasons. Our first priority was to prevent you from destroying any more of our Collectors. The second was to let you know that your planet was not going to be destroyed by what you thought to be a head-on collision with a run away planet called Pluto.

  “Now that I have explained ourselves, could you explain what happened to our Collectors and defense ships?”

  The President answered, “I have the Commander of our Air Force here. I believe he can tell you what happened.”

  General Stormer responded, “We were notified a few days ago concerning some unusual devastation in areas of central Florida. These areas were so destroyed that no living thing remained on the soil. We couldn’t find any natural cause, so we started looking for something unusual. When we began investigating we found that our radar had picked up an object on our display screens just before the devastation on the ground occurred. Once we made that connection, we alerted our Air Force F-10s to patrol the area until we picked up the object again on radar. When it happened again, I ordered our jets to shoot down the object. Please understand we could not afford to have that kind of devastation happen over one of our populated regions. If it did, we would have lost millions of lives. As it is, we have hundreds who have lost their lives and a lot more wounded and suffering.”

  E-1 replied, “You should not have been able to see my Collectors. Do you have new technology that allows you to see them?”

  The General decided it was best to play dumb and answered, “We only saw the two and assumed they were causing the devastation we had been investigating. Are you telling me there’re more of these things flying machines out there?”

  E-1 was quiet, and then said, “We have a few more that are still collecting the last amounts of electrical charge needed to restore us to full power. The illusion shields must have malfunctioned, as otherwise you would not have picked up the Collectors on your so-called radar. Do you know what happened to our defense ship’s pilot?”

  Again General Stormer responded, “When our aircraft fired on your Collector ship, our pilots immediately picked up a fast moving object heading toward them. They called in and said something was approaching them fast and that was the last we heard from them. We are conducting a search now of the approximate location of the last contact, but haven’t found anything yet.”

  E-1 replied immediately, seeming irritated, “Give me the co-ordinates of our two downed Collectors and the defense ship. I will contact you again after we analyze your information.”

  The President asked, “E-1, is there anyway we can contact you, in case we have new information or one of your other Collectors starts causing problems again?”

  The response was solemn, “I will contact you again shortly, just tell me the co-ordinates of the ships.”

  After General Stormer stated the co-ordinates requested, the speakerphone went silent and so did the room. They had just listened to a life form from places we didn’t know existed, but learned very little about it. The President broke the silence with a question, “Anyone with any comments?”

  As people around the room started raising their hands, the General walked over to The President and whispered, “Be careful what you say, since E-1 can control our communications, he might be able to monitor what is being said in this room.”

  The president nodded in agreement then fielded the first question, “Isn’t there someway to notify the rest of the world not to panic- It seems they are friendly and have a logical explanation to why they’re here.”

  While the president was doing the Potomac two-step, General Stormer walked over to the Director of the CIA and whispered, “Hello, Michael. I don’t want to talk in here, would you go for a walk with me and my team?” As they walked toward the door, the General looked at Woods, Donemore, Jeff and Janet and nodded for them to follow. Once outside, nothing was said until they reached Pennsylvania Avenue, where the General felt there was enough background noise so the conversations would be adequately muffled. He began by saying, “Keep your voices down. I’m hoping E-1 can’t hear us, but what did you guys think of all that.”

  Woods, replied immediately, “This ‘thing’ is lying through it’s shiny neon covering or whatever it is. We know he has more than just a few of these Collectors out there. He didn’t seem concerned about our people that died, only the location of his precious ships. And hit by an asteroid- Give me a break! They’re so far advanced, how could their spacecraft not avoid an asteroid?”

  Janet Harris was a woman who had dedicated most of her adult life to giving comfort and relief to people in areas destroyed by some sort of catastrophe. Sh
e did everything possible to help and make people believe that things will get better and restore their faith when things looked disheartening. She was irate and responded. “What is it with you people, anyway- You all have seen way too many science fiction movies, where the aliens come in blasting and are always the bad guys. Or maybe because you’re Government employees, you’re just skeptical about everything. You want to hide this, don’t tell him that, let’s go outside he might be listening. E-1 is an alien to our way of life, just because he speaks our language and knows something of our evolution doesn’t mean he knows how to handle speaking to us diplomatically. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Why can’t we give him the benefit of the doubt- Look at the size of his spaceship— Do you really think they need to hide anything? If they’re the bad guys, do you think they’re worried about us? Do we have the ability to shoot down a spaceship the size of our moon? I say let’s give him the benefit of the doubt until we find out something different, not that we could do much about it anyway.”

  General Stormer said, “Okay, some of us believe E-1, some don’t. Let’s all keep an open mind on this both ways and try to find facts to prove any theories one way or another. Agent Woods brought up a legitimate fact that we know there are a lot more Collectors out there than E-1 wants us to know about. Maybe the Director of the CIA can give us more information on that. I had called him to find out whatever information he could on this new moon.”

  “I don’t have anything back yet, General. We notified as many observatories as possible and are in the process of repositioning the satellites, but these things take time. As soon as we can get some hard evidence about the spaceship and the Collectors, I’ll contact you,” the Director replied.

  General Stormer agreed and said, “We better head back inside before E-1 and the others find us conspicuously gone for too long a time. But, remember, we’re looking for facts, one way or another.”

  When they arrived inside the conference room nothing had changed. The president was still answering questions about what exactly happened in Florida and if we were covering up anything. He gave a look at General Stormer when he entered the room as if to say, “Thanks for putting me in the hot seat— The next series of questions are yours.” But before anymore questions could be asked, the speakerphone rang again and the room was immediately silent.

  E-1’s voice echoed in the room, “My scientists have determined that if there was a malfunction of the illusion shield, the combination of the defective force field and the rain would cause a deadly corrosive that would do the damage you described. We apologize for the devastation it caused to your land and most of all, to your people. We also received word from another of our defense ships that checked out your co-ordinates and found all three of our spacecrafts. He did report that your people were moving in and out of the all three ships. I understand your curiosity, but I must ask you to move your personnel away from all three ships. If anything was taken out please put it back in. I’m requesting this because I will not allow the people of The United States to gain any technology advantage over the rest of your world by analyzing our spacecraft. I remind you again, that we are not here to interfere with your evolution or cause you harm in any way.

  “Although I don’t think you’ll gain much from our ships, I don’t want to take that chance. Within the next twelve hours, we will destroy all three ships, so please do as I say.

  “We have been unable to contact or locate the pilot of the downed defense ship. Our species cannot survive in your atmosphere and probably oxidized after impact. I will free up the communications for the rest of the world when you signal me to do so. This will allow you time to prepare how you wish to explain to the rest of your world leaders what happened here, who we are and why we came. We will continue to re-power our spaceship and soon be gone.”

  The president replied, “How do I signal you if we need to contact you again for any reason?”

  E-1 responded, “The phone you are currently using will always be open. Touching the ‘clear button’ will free up worldwide communications. Touch the number one button on the phone and I’ll be notified.”

  As soon as E-1 was off the phone, the room exploded with a roar of clapping and relief. The president immediately announced, “I’ll get together with my press secretary and put together a statement for the rest of the world. When General Stormer arrives back at his control room in Orlando, I’ll let him address the people of our nation as to what has happened. We’ll synchronize a worldwide TV link on the air to prevent any panic, and we’ll break in after each nation has addressed its people. It seems our fears of world destruction have changed to a realization that we are not alone in this universe and they are friendly. Interesting indeed.”

  12

  JUBILATION WAS SHORT LIVED FOR GENERAL STORMER and his team. After a briefing with the president, the team was escorted back to the airport and awaiting a jet that would take them back to Orlando. Their orders were to move all personnel away from the downed spacecrafts and analyze all the data collected so far by the scientists. The captive alien was to remain a secret and Donemore’s work was to continue as before.

  Once the jet reached cruising altitude, everyone started moving around and talking about E-1 and the past few hours’ events. Woods and Donemore exchanged jabs about how all these years Donemore had doubted aliens existed. “I bet if we go back and review all those cases you just wrote off with some sort of lame logical explanation, we would find some related to our buddy E-1 and Pluto,” Woods declared.

  “You’re not going to hear this often, Woods, but since E-1 says they’ve been around for some sixty years, you’re probably right, no you are right,” Donemore said.

  Janet was standing next to them and said, “I wouldn’t start patting yourself on the back, Woods. If I remember correctly, you said, ‘This thing is lying through it’s shiny neon covering,’ or whatever. As it turns out, he was remorseful about our dead and apologized for the loss. He was concerned about his ships and us telling the truth, as we were with him, but at least he admitted he was wrong about his initial fears. We have not. We still have one of his pilots and won’t admit to it. Seems one sided to me.”

  Woods replied, “I will admit his second conversation seemed more concerned about our world, his attitude and demeanor changing after he did his research. But he’s holding back on the number of Collector ships and we’re holding back on his pilot. I think that is common, when two people don’t quite understand or trust each other yet. If he had come out and explained the other Collectors, I believe we would have told him about his pilot. But not to be.”

  General Stormer interrupted and said, “Woods, I think you should contact the team leaders at each site and start filling them in on what is going to happen within the next twelve hours. I don’t know how E-1 is going to destroy those ships, but we better take precautions in case he over estimates the amount of force it will take. We don’t want anyone within a ten mile radius of those ships.”

  While Woods made contact with his people, Janet noticed that Jeff was not paying attention to anything being said, totally uncharacteristic. He was sitting next to the window watching with great curiosity at something outside. She went over and sat next to him and said, “What’s so interesting?”

  Jeff was so fascinated with the display, that he was somewhat startled when Janet touched him on the shoulder. “Remember the flight up, where I explained phenomenon of the Northern Lights? Well, they’re putting on an even bigger display right now, which is very unusual. I have a friend at NASA and when we get back I going to give him a call.”

  Janet looked out the window to see an amazing hue displayed across the late night sky. “It certainly is beautiful, Jeff.” The two had become lovers during this weird historical event and found comfort in one another during the uncertain times, so this was a special treat to relax, hold hands and let Mother Nature put on her unusually beautiful show.

  Just before the plane landed General Stormer gave out orders i
ndividual and specific. “Okay, everyone we still have a job to do. Woods, make sure you have your scientists clear of the three ships within the next six hours.

  “Janet, you’re responsible for getting all civilians out and within a ten-mile radius.

  “Donemore, get back to the hospital and do whatever you can for that alien pilot.

  “Jeff, you, Janet and I will head back to the control room. Your station is about to have the most exclusive story in the history of mankind. I want you to explain to your station manager everything that we have been doing for the past few days and work with Janet on how she will be alerting the public of the evacuation. Somehow E-1 is going to destroy these ships, so let’s make sure no one gets hurt or panics when it happens.”

  When the private jet touched down, everyone wished each other good luck and headed out in different directions to handle General Stormer’s orders. As Jeff, Janet and the General drove back to the TV station, Jeff called his manager on his cell phone, “Richard, this is Jeff. Remember when all this started we were promised the exclusive story on exactly what happened? Well, call everyone you need to right now. We are about to break the greatest story in the history of mankind. The entire story will be broadcast exclusively from our station only, so you need to contact all the other networks to feed off us. How’s that for an exclusive? I’ll fill you in when we get there, but we have to act fast.”

  When Jeff got off the phone, General Stormer said, “Jeff, your station personnel are the professionals on breaking news. I know you’re excited about explaining the last few days’ events, but first I want you to put me on the air to explain the importance of everyone evacuating from the area of the ships. Second, since Janet is the professional crisis handler, she should get on and explain that anyone needing assistance getting out of the area should contact whoever she plans to handle this. The evacuation is extremely important and we don’t want anyone to panic while it’s being accomplished.