The Book of Ralph

by Christopher Steinsvold

  Knowing the president had agreed to not to attack the cylinder, she calmed—Francis couldn’t lie about this, not with me as a witness. At that moment, I assumed Francis would’ve told Samantha if I wasn’t there, and that, out of politeness to me, he did not pull her aside and tell her privately.

  But he wouldn’t have told her—he didn’t know how.

  “What am I doing here?” she asked, looking at me.

  No doubt, Samantha wanted to call the president, but Cindy Shepherd was incommunicado at that moment, en route to a secure location. I got into scientist mode and called Captain Hathaway to ask him anything that came to mind.

  “Captain, is there anything interesting you can tell us about the cylinder . . . something you can see that we don’t see down here?”

  The captain did not respond.

  “Captain?”

  “Sorry, sir. The answer is ‘yes,’ but . . . It might sound strange.”

  “Please. It may be important.”

  “The cylinder . . . doesn’t seem to be affected by the wind . . . at all.”

  “How is the wind up there?”

  “The wind is mild, but noticeable. Gusts have blown by, and the cylinder doesn’t even wobble, not even a little. Very strange, sir.”

  “What do you think the cylinder is made out of?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Is it translucent?”

  “What, sir?”

  “Does light shine through it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you sense any heat off of it?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Captain, how do you think it is staying aloft?”

  “. . . I have no good idea about that, sir.”

  “None at all? Even a bad guess would be pretty good right now.”

  “Perhaps a . . . highly contrived dirigible, sir.”

  “Thank you. Captain, fly back around and give us a clear shot of the bar code.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We had ignored the specific numbers written on the bar code. When recycling cans, I often noticed that the numbers under the Universal Product Code, the bar code, were typically twelve digits. The cylinder had eleven.

  The numbers on the cylinder were: 18663287687. I showed the numbers to Samantha and Francis. With a smile, Francis rewrote the numbers with revealing hyphenation:

  1-866-328-7687

  Taking the initiative, Samantha started dialing the toll-free number on her phone and Francis snatched her phone away.

  “We should know who we are calling beforehand,” he said. “Knowledge is power.”

  Samantha nodded quickly, and he tossed the phone back to her.

  Francis called a liaison at NSA headquarters and requested a search for the number in every available database. While we waited for an answer, Samantha typed the number into Google.

  Her search returned a few websites, but only one was relevant, and it was at the top of the list. The strange website contained only one page: an oversized photo with superb resolution, far too large to fit completely on a computer screen.

  Later, Francis had the website disabled—ensuring no one else could view it.

  As the web page slowly loaded, the upper portion of the photo revealed an unusual view of Earth from space. I realized the photo wasn’t from a man-made satellite, because the Earth was too far away. As Samantha scrolled down to view the lower parts of the photo, the round horizon of the moon came into view.

  I gasped.

  As she scrolled down further, the surface of the moon cut the field of vision in half. The sharp crimson letters of the lunar advertisement, unreadable from this close angle, were unmistakable. Feeling unsteady, I grabbed Samantha by the shoulder.

  She stopped to look at me, squinting in confusion.

  “Keep scrolling down.”

  As she scrolled, the granular surface of the moon came into the foreground close-up, revealing the long, dark shadow cast upon the surface of the moon from the being who took the photo.

  My hand covered my mouth so quickly it slapped my face. My gut instinct told me the photo was real, but I was afraid to trust myself. When I looked at Francis, he turned away to hide a smile.

  “This must be photoshopped,” Samantha said.

  “Keep scrolling,” I urged. Near the bottom of the photo was a typed message:

  For a good time, call 1-866-328-7687.

  By then, the cylinder was a mile above the South Lawn of the White House. Tourists and residents were waking up, and the whole world would soon be talking. It was a good time to make a free call and find out who was inside the cylinder.

  III

  ALIEN

  I got an outside line, dialed, and put on speakerphone. Francis didn’t stop me. We waited about a minute, listening to a mixture of jittery clacks and clicks before the phone started ringing. Location traces for White House calls are automatic.

  “Hello,” a jovial voice answered.

  “Yes, hello. With whom am I speaking?”

  “Please call me ‘Ralph.’ Ralph!”

  For a moment, I thought Ralph was eating something or the connection was faulty, but then I processed the strange bubbling sound as laughter. Ralph laughed for a full minute as we wondered what to think.

  “Do you think ‘Ralph’ is a good name?” Ralph asked.

  “. . . It is a wonderful name.”

  Ralph laughed some more. His effervescent voice was an inviting swirl of international accents. There was a depth in his laugh that swallowed you inside.

  “Ralph, are you inside . . . the cylinder?”

  “I am. What is your name?”

  “My name is ‘Markus.’”

  “That’s a wonderful name. I will enjoy saying it often.”

  “Thank you . . . Ralph, are you in control of the cylinder?”

  Again, Ralph laughed for an inappropriate amount of time. He seemed genuinely overjoyed to be talking, to anyone.

  “That is a funny question. Markus, I want to ask you a question too. May I?”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Can I land my cylinder on your White House lawn?”

  Samantha yanked me by the arm outside the range of speakerphone and spoke directly in my ear with an angry whisper. “He is in restricted airspace. Tell him to take his cylinder and get the hell out. We can’t have him landing on the lawn. And don’t forget to mention he’s going straight to federal prison.”

  As I mentally juggled ways of restating Samantha’s meaning, Ralph interrupted. “Markus, is someone there with you? It sounds like a female, a woman. Are you flirting? . . . Is that a bad question?”

  Trying to stay quiet, Samantha expressed her sudden irritation by taking a square pillow from the couch and throwing it at me.

  “Ralph, don’t land on the lawn. It is best if you take your cylinder and—”

  “That’s quite all right, Markus. I’ll pleasantly land it on the street. I know how you people feel about your lawns. I can’t wait to touch them.”

  He hung up.

  Francis immediately put the Secret Service operator tracing the call on speakerphone.

  “We have a trace, sir, but it—”

  “Please,” Francis hissed.

  “I’m figuring this out as we speak, sir. The toll-free number was established twelve months ago, and it looks like . . . It is an alternate access number for a Chinese communications satellite, ChinaSat 11. Looks like the Comsat got hacked.”

  “All right.”

  “We can’t trace it any further. The signal’s source could be coming from anywhere.”

  More than any of us, Samantha hated not knowing what was going on. She was used to asking questions and getting answers. “So the call relayed through a Chinese satellite, but the Chinese are not involved?”

  “Correct. Hacking a satellite is not as impressive as it sounds. And something as innocuous as this would easily go undetected. It limits the possibilities, but not by much,” Francis said. No one in the ro
om thought the Chinese were responsible. The Chinese government was far too friendly with America, and far too humorless.

  Francis’s smartphone started beeping, and he activated the speakerphone.

  It was Captain Hathaway. “Sir, we have a development.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “The cylinder has an increased rate of descent, and it has shifted to the southeast. I suggest you look out your window.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Looking up out of the bulletproof windows, we saw it, barely lit in the morning dark by dawn. It descended quicker than expected, floating and maneuvering without sound, and decelerated as it approached the intersection of Hamilton Place and East Executive Avenue, just south of the visitor’s center.

  It’s embarrassing to admit, but I sensed a sublime beauty gazing upon the cylinder. A bubbling joy filled me just below the threshold of laughter as a dark silence flooded the room. Each of us picked up a pair of binoculars to view the delicate landing of the absurd at the southeast gate of the White House.

  When I saw it, I knew—we were not the ones in control.

  The unexpected guest had become the host, and somehow we were the ones that didn’t belong. We were the homeless orphans peeking through the banquet window. We were the frills of the universe gazing upon something unspeakably more central than ourselves.

  The cylinder landed, not with a thud or a bang, but with an impossible silence.

  I turned to Samantha. “You still think this is dangerous?”

  “No other option makes any sense.”

  /

  IV

  OTHER

  Francis answered his phone, and his face told us the president was on the other end. His palm motioned for us to stay as he moved out the door. Samantha and I were alone. I confronted her. “For all we know, this is performance art from a fine arts student gone off course.”

  “You’re forgetting it wasn’t picked up on radar. I doubt any art students have stealth capability.”

  “But can anyone avoid all of the radar covering DC? That’s practically impossible, right? Which means it’s probably some malfunction, a glitch.”

  “That’s quite a glitch.”

  “In any case, why would it be a danger? You think it’s a bomb?”

  “Why not?” Samantha said as she took out a cigarette and casually lit it with a Zippo.

  “If it’s a bomb, why hasn’t it detonated?”

  “Maybe the bomber is waiting for the president to come back.”

  “But then we’ll disarm the bomb before she returns.”

  “Okay. Maybe it will go off in a few minutes,” she said, looking for an ashtray.

  “With Ralph inside? Does Ralph sound like a suicide bomber?”

  “Ralph is a loon on a phone. We don’t know he’s in there.”

  It was a fair point I hadn’t considered. For all we knew, the cylinder was being controlled remotely, and no one was inside.

  “The president and vice president are far away in secure locations,” I said. “The White House is not a target-rich environment for terrorists at the moment.”

  “You’re being narrow-minded. You have no idea what’s in that thing or how powerful it is. There’s the Pentagon, the Treasury, the Capitol Building, FBI headquarters, not to mention the White House . . . all of these things and more which your average terrorist would love to destroy.”

  “So then . . . Why hasn’t it exploded?”

  “It should go off any second now,” she said, touching her hair.

  “Then why are you here talking to me?”

  Intending to soothe her fears, I only refined them. Francis came back into the room, and Samantha charged at him. “We must find out what’s in the cylinder immediately.”

  “. . . You can’t smoke in here,” he said. With a harsh smile, she grabbed Francis by the arm and tenderly dropped her cigarette in his fresh mug of coffee.

  “We need to know what’s in that cylinder, Francis. We need to know now,” Samantha said. “Stop ignoring the danger.”

  “Look outside. Our people are on it,” he said, placing his soiled coffee down.

  Samantha picked up a pair of binoculars. “All I see are a bunch of scientists with hazmat suits taking air samples and marines with guns not using them. Look at all of them. They’ve got the thing cordoned off and most of them are more than twenty yards away.”

  “They are checking radiation levels carefully before they bring everyone else close. So far, there’s no abnormal radiation. The FBI bomb squad is down there on standby, CDC is here too, and there are all sorts of dogs sniffing for anything dangerous. It is all being coordinated off-site by Homeland. This is under control,” Francis said.

  I picked up binoculars and like Samantha said, most of them were far away from the cylinder, but they were all working, and I sensed no hesitation. I spied the faces of the various breeds of dogs. None of them were barking.

  “We need to get over there, break it open, and get inside. I’ll get a giant can opener if I have to,” Samantha said and rushed outside.

  I started to follow as Francis grabbed my arm.

  “Samantha can handle herself. We need to talk . . .” he closed the doors, “. . . about the congressional report on the lunar advertisement.”

  “Is that why I’m here?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “So there’s a connection. I mean, besides both occurring on the same day of the year?”

  “The NSA did a follow-up study to your investigation—classified—only I, the president, and the few who worked on it know. Samantha doesn’t know. The director of the project was actually sitting on this study for a few weeks, afraid to tell me the results. But when I told him about the cylinder early this morning, he finally told me, and it is a damn good thing he did.”

  “Is this the classified material you didn’t tell Samantha?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not tell her?” I was too naïve to expect the routine secrecy between such high-ranking government officials.

  “Why not tell her?” Francis said. “You are missing the bigger questions here.”

  “Like what?”

  He laughed hard and shook his red head. “You should be asking why anyone is in the White House at all—they’ve evacuated it, evacuated it completely, for a lot less.”

  He was right. In 2002, a single-engine Cessna flew too close and the entire White House was evacuated. A similar situation occurred in 2005.

  He continued, “You should be asking why it is just the three of us. You should be asking why my assistant isn’t here, and the same for Samantha. You should be asking: where’s the CIA? If this is a possible terrorist attack, why is Homeland Security not in charge?”

  I am no strategist, and Francis was making this glaringly clear.

  “Okay . . . Why isn’t Homeland Security in charge?”

  “The short answer is: the president trusts them, but not enough. Samantha and I have very close, personal relationships with the president. And she trusts you because of your work in the congressional investigation, but in any case, I wanted you here for that reason.”

  “But you’re still avoiding my question. Why not tell Samantha about this other report, the NSA report? For that matter, why not tell me?”

  “Hear me out. I’m telling you now. The conclusion of your investigation was that Coca-Cola did not create the advertisement.”

  “Of course.”

  “Our study concluded . . . No one could have created it.”

  I aimed my eyes at his and he didn’t blink. My open mouth salivated and a wisp of nausea knocked me gently.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Completely,” he said, smirking.

  “So, God made the advertisement,” I said with no sincerity.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I promised myself that if Francis was joking, I would punch him in the gut. I mustered an angry face and stared at him. He opened his eyes wide
r and stared back.

  The problem wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. The problem was that I already did. There was no humanly possible way to explain the lunar advertisement.

  But, believing it and saying it are two different things. My composure dissipated as old nightmares heated my thoughts. Ralph would later say it was an important test for the individual to sincerely discuss the actuality of alien visitors. This was mine.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Look,” Francis said, losing his smile, “no nation on Earth could have done this and you know it—you, more than anyone, should know.”

  “How exactly do you come to a conclusion like that?”

  “Easy. You ask the best minds available how they would create the advertisement. If they tell you it’s impossible, you have to agree. Not a single engineer at DARPA or NASA could explain how it was possible. Without actually going to the moon, there is simply no feasible way to create the lunar advertisement undetected.”

  “So you’re saying aliens did it.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re implying it.”

  “Yes, but I’m glad you’re the one who actually said it.”

  I shut my eyes and felt vindication but was afraid to let it show. Still, I feared Francis was playing an insane joke on me. The lunar ad had caused me enough humiliation.

  “So you don’t buy into any of the conspiracy theories about Coca-Cola? You don’t think the president is covering anything up?”

  “Markus, even if you told me Coca-Cola was involved, I still wouldn’t believe it. Only morons believe in conspiracy theories. We live in a world where two nosy reporters caused President Nixon to resign. This is the same world where President Clinton couldn’t get a blowjob without the whole world finding out. This is the real world, and in the real world, no one, not President Shepherd nor Coca-Cola, could possibly keep a conspiracy of that magnitude quiet.”

  As I considered his words, I picked up some binoculars and looked at the cylinder. I saw Samantha gesticulating furiously while talking to, or yelling at, someone from the CDC.

  “This . . . doesn’t make sense. Why would you authorize the research in the first place?”