The Spaceship Next Door

by Gene Doucette

  It made for pretty good politics.

  There were a lot of complications, certainly. The riots were bad. International politics got about ten times weirder. Suicide rates were alarmingly high. But at the same time, a smart politician could capitalize on the upside of being in charge when the world changed, while suffering from almost none of the customary downside.

  There was no alien invasion, no need to develop some kind space armada—as if that was even an option—and no cities were destroyed. No ultimatums were issued or negotiations brokered with alien generals. Essentially none of the options from any work of fiction on the subject ever came up.

  Instead, strategies were debated and official plans drawn up within the government, while outside, in the declassified world, the president ran for re-election with the pedigree of a wartime commander-in-chief, only without the body count.

  The whole time he was busy being A Leader, effectively Handling The Situation just like his campaign strategists said, there was the nagging thought in the back of his mind: what if I actually have to make a decision here?

  He knew the doomsday scenarios. He signed off on them. But by the third year, with the ship still showing no signal of intent, he figured he was in the clear. Maybe the worst-outcome plans they’d drawn up would get used one day, but it would be a day long after he left office, and a decision made by someone else.

  The ship was not so kind.

  In front of him was an executive order. It had been drafted over a year ago and left unsigned in a folder kept in a locked safe somewhere in the White House. He didn’t even know precisely where that safe was, and made a note to ask his chief of staff later. (It was a strange thing to think, but it had been a strange night.)

  He was at the head of a table in the harshly labeled ‘war room’ of the building. It was a surprisingly pedestrian room: no polished oak tables or any of that. Half the chairs were of the folding variety. It was not a room meant to impress like the Oval Office was, because nobody who required impressing was allowed into the war room.

  About the only cool thing about it was the monitors on one wall, which carried all kinds of interesting satellite feeds depending on the crisis.

  At this moment, the screens were dark, and the president was alone. He’d already received the formal briefing, which included a long list of the world and national leaders who signed off on the decision he would be making as soon as he put his signature on the bottom of the order. He wished some of those leaders were in the room and literally standing behind him, telling him that what he was about to do was the correct decision.

  He picked up the pen, and hoped to God it was.

  The phone began to ring.

  It was a conference room speakerphone. It sat in the middle of the table, looking somewhat flying-saucer-like. There was only one button on it. Hitting the button opened a line to the switchboard, and the White House switchboard could place a call from there to any place in the world.

  It wasn’t the sort of phone line people called into.

  He pushed the button.

  “Um… hello?”

  Mr. President! Hi, I’m glad I caught you.”

  It was a woman’s voice, but he didn’t recognize it.

  “Is this the switchboard? Whom am I talking to?”

  “It’s Annie. Annie Collins. We met once, but I’m sure you don’t remember. I’m calling from Sorrow Falls.”

  “Miss, I don’t know how you got this number, but you’re going to be in a great deal of trouble.”

  “I know, it was tough! The ship was already jacked into the White House Wi-Fi, but it took, like forever to find a port to a video feed, and then it turns out you’re in a room without security cameras. Figures. Anyway, had to try a few numbers.”

  “What ship are you talking about, Ms. Collins?”

  It was a prank. Clearly. The worst timed prank in the world.

  “Look, I don’t have a lot of time. After I hang up with you I want to call my mom, I know she’s probably flipping out, but I figured I’d better get you first. Before you nuke the town.”

  “How could you… Who are you, again?”

  “Annie. Like I said, the ship was already hooked up to the White House. It has the Pentagon too. Has everywhere, actually. It’s how it was learning about us. Advance probe and all that.”

  “The spaceship, you mean.”

  “Yeah, that ship. So the nuke isn’t a big secret. But look, it’s not going to work.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of expert opinion that thinks otherwise.”

  “Sure. Okay, so, first problem. You guys use GPS satellite targeting, right?”

  “I think we do. Ms. Collins, how old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen, but I don’t think that’s relevant right now. Hang on, I’m gonna conference in Steve from the Pentagon.”

  Steven Prentiss was a three-star general. Exactly two people in the world called him Steve: the president, and Mrs. Prentiss.

  One of the screens on the wall blinked to life. It was a wide-angle shot of Massachusetts. Wide meaning it was far enough up that it was difficult to tell where the state was except for the Cape Cod hook on the right. A pinpoint dot generated by the satellite delivering the image identified Sorrow Falls, in the northwestern part of the state.

  “Mr. President, you asked for the satellite imaging?” Steve said. It was definitely Steve’s voice. “Did you wish to watch?”

  “I haven’t signed the order yet, Steve. Stand by. Ms. Collins, can you tell me why I’m looking at this?”

  “Can you zoom in?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, who is this?” Steve asked. “I thought…”

  “Humor me, Steve,” the president said. “Go ahead and zoom.”

  The world on the screen got bigger. The president had seen satellites zoom in for close-ups a hundred times and it never failed to disorient him. He always felt like he was falling.

  “How long shall we do this, Ms. Collins?” he asked.

  “Keep on going… okay, stop. See that light?”

  In the dead center of the image was a bright light, but the focus was insufficient to identify the source.

  “I do.”

  “All right, try and get a closer look of that.”

  “Mr. President?” the general on the phone asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  The image zoomed some more. It was—of course—a shot from directly overhead. He wished he could get side angles, but there was only so much a sub-orbital satellite could do. As it got closer, the light split into dozens of smaller lights. It was a parking lot shaped like a digital zero.

  “Gentlemen, that is the Oakdale Mall. Your precise GPS coordinates are targeting the wrong town.”

  “Steve?”

  “Mr. President, I don’t know what to say… We’re comparing this to still images of the area… I think she’s right.”

  “Are you doing this, Ms. Collins?”

  “Me? No, not me personally.”

  “Seems you’ve hacked the war room and the Pentagon in the past few minutes. It strikes me as a reasonable question.”

  “Mr. President, who is this person? Is she not in the room with you?”

  “According to her, she’s a sixteen year old calling us from Sorrow Falls. So Ms. Collins, the targeting package is off, we can adjust that.”

  “It’ll miss in every direction. Right now, Sorrow Falls doesn’t exist according to any of your satellites. You’ll keep hitting the wrong town. But that’s only the first problem.”

  “Did you say she’s sixteen?” Steve asked.

  “Go on, tell me what the second problem is.”

  “So you’re probably thinking, well, Annie, it’s a nuclear bomb. We can miss left or right and still take out the target.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking, yes.”

  “The bomb won’t work on the ship. Now, it’s true the amount of energy coming out of one of those is too much for the shield to straight-up absorb like it d
id with the other things you dropped earlier, but whatever it can’t absorb it’ll just reflect outward. Basically, you hit it with a bomb and you’ll destroy New England. And the ship will still be here.”

  “Miss, how could you possibly know this?” Steve asked.

  “I’m in the ship, general. It’s a really super long story, and I don’t have time to tell you the whole thing right now. I’d like to call my mother, then I’m going to take down the shield, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t destroy the entire East Coast while I was doing that. Everything’ll be okay, guys, I promise. You can stand down. What would be great is if you guys can figure out how to feed about five thousand ex-zombies who are gonna wake up super hungry. No brains, just pizza or something.”

  “I’m sorry,” the president said, “did you say zombies?”

  * * *

  The invisible shield over Sorrow Falls came down at oh-three-thirty, but the army didn’t realize this until oh-four-hundred, as the problem with invisible shields is that it’s difficult to tell when they aren’t there any more.

  There were multiple entry points to the town, but only a few that could accommodate heavy artillery. After an aerial review—via helicopter, at a distance—of the bridges leading to Main, it was determined that the best route to take was from the west, down Spaceship Road. This plan also satisfied members of the Army Corps of Engineers involved in the planning and execution of the project that widened and paved Spaceship Road specifically for the purpose of supporting an invading force.

  The reason the bridges were considered bad options was the traffic clogging them, and the assumption that there were people in those cars. In a worst-case scenario sort of situation, the army might still consider pushing the cars off one of the bridges or simply driving over them with tanks, but this was a less-than-ideal solution, for a number of reasons. One was that commuter bridges were more or less designed to prevent cars from simply tipping over the sides. Another was that as much as tanks were designed to climb over cars, that sort of thing could take forever, and leave a crushed obstacle in its wake, rendering the bridge even less passable for all the non-tank vehicles.

  Spaceship Road also had a lot of cars on it, but there was no precipitous drop on either side, and not even a shoulder to bar cars from drifting off. This opened up a range of possibilities for clearing the road. The choice the army went with was to ask the occupants of the cars to kindly get the hell out of the way immediately.

  It was an effective approach, involving the least amount of property damage, but it also took a terribly long time, because the line of cars was thirty deep, taking up both travel lanes, and everyone was facing outbound.

  At oh-four-thirty, the general in charge of the invading force tasked Major Sharon Price with the responsibility of entering town ahead of the rest of the army in order to scout the terrain.

  Major Price grabbed the nearest Jeep and a driver for that Jeep, took it off-road around the traffic jam, and became the first non-resident to enter Sorrow Falls since the ship self-activated.

  She and her driver—a corporal named Wentz—headed straight for the spaceship, past what looked like an utterly ruined army base. A number of observations were reported up the chain-of-command immediately, including the discovery that everyone in the town was either dead on the side of the road or sleeping on the side of the road. This was not strictly an either/or, although it was interpreted as such by the higher-ups initially, which was why the first news reports that morning announced incorrectly that the entire town was dead.

  Travel past the very edge of the town was slow, because not all of the people dead/sleeping were on the side of the road. Quite a few were in the middle of it. Since a couple were actively snoring, Price and Wentz agreed that the best recourse was to evade them as much as was possible, and try to figure out later why so many were napping on the median strip.

  The only place Price discovered people both alive and conscious was around the ship. There, she met Corporals Corning and Louboutin, the only two unaffected army soldiers from the base, and a handful of civilians, all of whom later became famous in their own way for having survived the night.

  None of them was Annie Collins.

  When the military was ordered to the scene, it was with two mandates: secure the ship, and take Annie Collins into custody. Sharon Price had no idea who Ms. Collins was or why she might warrant such particular concern, but orders were orders.

  By oh-five-fifteen, Price had notified the trailing force that the town of Sorrow Falls was no longer in immediate danger, and urged the general to exercise caution, as there were private citizens and army officers sleeping out in the open.

  This point had to be repeated several times.

  Price also declared the ship to be secured, or at least as secured as it had been the day before it came to life.

  At oh-five-twenty-two, the side of the ship opened, and a sixteen-year old girl in muddy clothing emerged from a blue-tinted interior. Price and Wentz drew their weapons and ordered the survivors to step back. This order was roundly ignored.

  The girl was Annie Collins, and Price finally understood her orders.

  According to most accounts, the first thing Annie said—after the hugs she received from essentially everyone in the clearing that wasn’t Price or Wentz—was:

  “Step back.”

  This was excellent advice, because at oh-five-twenty-nine, the Sorrow Falls spaceship roared to life, lifted off the ground, and after hovering seven feet above the earth for several seconds, shot straight up and into space.

  Step back was not actually the first thing Annie said, however. The first thing she said was addressed specifically to Major Price and Corporal Wentz. It was: “I thought I ordered pizza.”

  24

  A Good Idea is Hard to Find

  Annie had never been to Washington D.C. before.

  The only other time the opportunity presented itself was a class trip to the capitol that was canceled last-minute because half the grade came down with the flu at the same time. It was the same year the ship landed anyway, so there was a lot less interest locally in going to see the White House and the Smithsonian when a much more interesting thing was happening on the town’s front lawn.

  She remembered that year pretty well, not just because of the ship. That was the year everyone on the planet—it seemed—passed through town, and when she learned that being famous didn’t preclude anybody from being a total nutbar. The cancellation of the annual D.C. class trip seemed like a formality.

  So far, she hadn’t had a chance to see anything up close. It was easy enough to spot important landmarks from the back of the SUV—the Washington Monument, Congress’s gold dome, the Lincoln Memorial—but it was all in passing, and largely ignored by everyone else in the car. She wondered what it must be like to live around things other people considered extraordinary. Then she remembered she was from Sorrow Falls.

  She could see the tip of the Monument from the window. She was in a corner room on the top floor of an unassuming, square building that looked a lot like several other such buildings in the district. She had no idea what the name of the building was—if it even had one—or which government agency it belonged to.

  It was a little alarming. Nobody would tell her precisely where she was going from day to day, only that they would like it very much if she came with them. It had been like this since the morning after. That was four days prior, but felt like it was months ago.

  Incredibly, since her initial interview, conducted in the field in front of the ship by an army officer and consisting of only five questions—are you all right, are you sure, can you step over here please, can we ask you a few questions, and are you Annie Collins—nobody questioned her. Once she answered the fifth question with an affirmation she was politely escorted to the back of a Jeep and had been on the move ever since. She guessed this was standard protocol for sixteen-year olds who call the president in the war room.

  Only one other question
was asked since. That was, can you write down everything that happened to you on the night of the ship, in your own words? She’d done that. Nothing was sent back with notes or feedback, or even a smiley face sticker like the one Mrs. Winston in English put on the essays she liked.

  It probably should have been a little intimidating. She didn’t feel intimidated, though. She’d had no contact with anyone from the media, but they hadn’t taken television away from her—that would probably, at some point, require that they decide to call her a prisoner instead of a guest—so she was well aware that her name came up quite a lot in the national discussion. Her friends from the trailer, plus Dill and Dougie, had clearly already been spoken to and released back into the wild, as they were all over the news. All except for two of them.

  The door on the other end of the room opened.

  “Ed!” Annie shouted. She stepped around the table and gave him a long hug. Then she punched him in the shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s been crazy.” He released her, stepped back and took a good look. “They’re treating you all right? Looks like they took you shopping.”

  “Yes! I can’t go to the Smithsonian, but the mall? That they can do for me. I think the girls in the Gap thought I was some head-of-state’s daughter. It was awesome. The hotel, too. But look at you, you look as tired than the last time I saw you.”

  “Fewer bruises, though, I hope.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like I said, it’s been crazy. Look, has anyone talked to you about…”

  He stopped himself when the door reopened, admitting an army officer in full dress.

  “Ms. Collins? Hello, I’m Major Corcoran.” His introduction came with a firm handshake. He had a cold hand and a dry grip.

  He dropped a shoulder bag onto the table and took a seat on one side of it, then extracted a tape recorder and a stack of folders. These he arranged on the table in a way that implied there was an exactly correct place for them. Then he took out a new pad of paper—white, standard size, lined—and a pen. They had places as well. Finally, he looked up at the two other people in the room, as if they only just arrived and he’d been there the whole time.