Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  “An offer we cannot refuse?”

  “True,” Ethos agreed. The dark eyes seemed to glimmer in the dim light. “We propose an alliance. Your assistance in…subduing the other nations on Earth would be invaluable. You have the bases and equipment to be of great service to us. In exchange, we will respect your independence and offer you technology that will assist your people in climbing out of the cultural and political trap you have created for yourself. We will even respect your Monroe Doctrine and establish no settlements on the American continent, leaving it all for you.”

  The President stared at him. He had never been under so much pressure before, even as a young officer. He understood, now, why the aliens had wanted to talk to the President, the only man who could agree to such an alliance, yet it was abhorrent. American soldiers, sailors and airmen were not mercenaries who could be spent at will, or sent into battle on behalf of some foreign power, even one from beyond the stars. He could not have sold such an alliance to Congress, or the Senate, or – most importantly of all – the people. It was a betrayal of everything America stood for.

  And then there were the allies. American credibility had been damaged almost beyond repair by a succession of Presidents who had ignored the concerns of their allies, or had been heedless of the message they were sending, the suggestion that American guarantees were valueless. President Chalk had sworn that it would be different and had spent considerable effort on mending fences, all of which would be swept away if he abandoned the allies to alien domination. There would be a political firestorm if details of any such deal leaked out to the public…

  And then there was the most important question of all. Could the aliens be trusted?

  There was no way to know. The aliens might mean every word and it would still be unacceptable, or they might intend to stab America in the back after they had subdued the rest of the world. Their technology was formidable enough that it would take years to duplicate it, yet the aliens might not be willing to allow them years, or perhaps even actively prevent them from developing the new technology. How many aliens were there in all? What did they really want?

  “It will have to be considered carefully,” he said. There were some foreign leaders – dictators, mainly – who saw the American President as being unencumbered by restraints on his power. They would expect him to sign at once without consulting his Cabinet or Congress. Ethos didn’t seem to want immediate agreement. “How many of you are there onboard this vessel?”

  “We have a population of one billion,” Ethos said. The President stared at him. He hadn’t realised that the mothership was that large. No wonder they wanted to offload some people as soon as possible. “We understand that you will have to consult with your government before accepting our offer.”

  The alien reached down to a table – the alien arm flexed in an utterly inhuman manner – and picked up a small black object. “This is a communicator capable of reaching our position,” Ethos said. “You may use it to make contact with us after you have made your decision. It is powered by a tiny power cell and will continue to operate for some years.”

  He passed it over to the President, who examined it carefully. It was about the size of a cigarette box, with a single pair of buttons set within the plastic – he thought it was plastic – casing. One of them was marked, in English, PUSH TO TALK. The other was unmarked. He passed it to Pepper, who put it in one of her pockets, and looked back at the alien.

  “We have also prepared this gift for you,” Ethos said. He picked a second object off the table and passed it to the President. It was a featureless black box, apart from a USB slot at one end. “It should be compatible with your systems. It contains medical data and certain computer models that we have provided as a gesture of good faith. You will be able to use it to develop cures and vaccines for all of the diseases infesting your planet, wiping them out completely, and develop new medical techniques that will improve the quality of life for your entire race. The computer models analyse your global society in detail and provide warnings of the threats you are currently facing. You will come to understand that the only hope your race has is working with us to avert a shared disaster.”

  Ethos stood up and the President did likewise. “The Talkers will accompany you back to your craft,” he concluded. “Thank you for coming.”

  ***

  The journey back to Earth passed in silence. The President barely had eyes for the view, even though it was even more spectacular on the return trip. He was concentrating on studying the two devices the aliens had given them and mulling over what they’d been told. Now that he was away from the alien, and the faint sense of unreality pervading the entire proceedings, he found himself beginning to get angry. Did the aliens really expect him to hand over the rest of the world on a silver platter?

  Earth swelled up in front of them and he braced himself as the craft rocketed down towards North America. Now that he was prepared for the view, he found it astonishing – and terrifying. The continent seemed tiny from space, yet it grew larger until – finally – the hull turned grey again. It was something of a relief. He caught his breath as a faint tremble ran through the craft, followed by a dull thump. A moment later, the hatch hissed open and air – blessed Earthly air – came in to the craft.

  It was still light outside – the entire trip had taken barely three hours – and somehow seeing the light galvanised him. He allowed Pepper to precede him out the hatch and down onto the ground, becoming aware, for the first time, of a strange gravity field. The aliens seemed to like a heavier gravity than Earth, which suggested that the smaller aliens might be stronger than they looked. There was no way to know.

  The decontamination procedure had been worked out before they’d departed and they stepped into the two vans that had been driven near the craft. The President looked behind him and realised that the craft had vanished. It had taken off without them even being aware of its departure. He stepped into the van – Pepper would go into the other van – and placed the two alien devices into a sealed box. They’d be taken somewhere to be studied before they were used for their intended purpose.

  “Welcome back, Mr President,” the doctor said. He was one of the foremost experts in biological warfare, even though he had admitted that aliens were somewhat out of his sphere. “If you’ll kindly strip for me…”

  The procedure was long and uncomfortable. The suit he'd worn for the trip would be incinerated completely, just in case of contamination, or to destroy any surveillance devices that the aliens had managed to attach to his clothes. The CIA had developed bugs so tiny that they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye and the aliens, probably, had more advanced technology. They could have slipped a device into his body, or his clothing, without him ever being aware of what they had done. The more paranoid fears – that he would have been returned under mind control, or perhaps replaced by an alien – also had to be checked, although personally he doubted that the aliens were that advanced. If they could do that, why would they bother negotiating at all? The more he thought about it, the more he suspected that the aliens weren't as strong as they claimed. There was no point in talking if they could overwhelm Earth with ease.

  “You’re clean, Mr President,” the Doctor said, finally. “No bugs, no germs and you are unquestionably human, not a lizard in drag.”

  “Good,” the President said, ignoring the weak joke. He needed sleep and a chance to think. He wasn’t going to get either. They needed to get back to Washington as quickly as possible. “Contact my Cabinet and tell them that I’ll see them in Washington tomorrow. We have some decisions to make.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Area 52, Nevada, USA

  Day 12

  Alex Midgard grinned to himself as he put down the book and made another series of notes in his computer file. The project of mining every science-fiction novel that even remotely touched on the subject of alien invasion was one of the most interesting tasks he'd had to do – and he even got paid for enjo
ying himself! He hadn’t realised how many alien invasion novels and films there were out there and digging through them all was a long process, yet it was fascinating. The authors all had a remarkable imagination. HG Wells had created the first real alien invasion book – although the Martians had actually been a metaphor for British colonialism and the effects it had on the locals – but hundreds of others had followed in his footsteps. Some were hard science-fiction, some involved made-up science…and some were just plain weird.

  The alien invasion movies had been different. American alien invasion movies tended to be ruthlessly heroic, with a clear threat, a clear enemy and a united response. British science-fiction tended to be more covert, with an enemy that was only seen in flickering shadows and hints of their existence, although there were many examples of other threats. Independence Day and Mars Attacks might have settled into the public mind, yet Alex privately doubted that they could serve as a guide to any real alien invasion. He’d watched the video from the alien mothership carefully – leaving others to do the real analysis – and retreated to his room. The aliens had given the President a very careful set of messages, but what did they all mean?

  He stood up, saved his work on the secure computer before shutting it down and heading out of his room. The base had become a great deal livelier now that other researchers had been brought in to work on the alien craft and bodies, although Alex suspected that there wouldn’t be many more results in a hurry. A handful had been summoned to another complex near Washington to examine the data and artefacts the President had brought back from the mothership, perhaps cursing the orders that took them away from the find of the century. There wasn't a scientist in the world who would refuse the chance to study the crashed UFO.

  The community room had been expanded with all the additional people; it now had a second television, a stack of DVDs and hundreds of books, as well as a buffet table and several coffeepots. Alex, who was used to the USAF’s attitude that people would eat what they were damn well given, found the attitude of some of the civilian scientists rather amusing. They wanted their comforts as they worked on the craft and, by and large, they’d got them. The base might not have been designed to serve as a home for the President in the event of nuclear war – and thereby lacked basic luxuries – yet Fields had brought in more personnel and upgraded the facilities. It was creating a security nightmare – if the aliens were tracking human aircraft, they might deduce the location of the crashed ship – but keeping the scientists happy was important. They were the only hope of unlocking the alien secrets before one billion aliens arrived on Earth.

  He poured himself a mug of coffee and then realised that he was not alone. Jane Hatchery was sitting in a comfortable armchair, rocking backwards and forwards as she clasped a mug of coffee to her chest as if it were a comforter. Her face was very pale and her eyes were tired, as if she hadn’t slept for a week. She might have been having nightmares – many people on the base were reacting badly to the presence of the alien craft, although there was no evidence that the craft was causing it – or perhaps it was something more serious. Alex picked up his own mug and stepped over to her.

  “Jane,” he said, softly. “Are you alright?”

  Jane looked up at him blearily. He had seen her before, but he hadn’t realised how attractive she was outside of her working clothes. Her long dark hair, which hadn’t been touched by a brush for hours, framed a vaguely oriental face and dark eyes.

  “Do I look alright?” She demanded. Her voice was weak, but growing stronger. “I think I’m in shock.”

  Alex blinked. “I could take you to the medical bay,” he offered. The base’s doctor had been handing out more antidepressants, sedatives and suchlike in the last few days than he would normally distribute in a year. It was a matter of some concern to Colonel Fields and his staff. The base had never held a vast supply of anything beyond the bare essentials. “Or I could escort you back to your room.”

  “Not without dinner and flowers,” Jane said. She smiled, weakly, as she pulled herself up. “I just keep having nightmares about the aliens.”

  “We’re all having them,” Alex reminded her. The base didn’t have a practicing psychologist – an oversight no one had bothered to correct – but the doctor had deduced that most people were suffering from stress and culture shock. He'd given Alex a list of examples from more mundane cultures on Earth, yet he had had to admit that they had all been human. The aliens were from somewhere else entirely. “I could buy you dinner and flowers, if you would like…?”

  “Get stuffed,” Jane said, with a wink. “Where could you take me on this base anyway?”

  Alex had to agree. The dining hall was massive and served the same food to everyone, regardless of rank or position. It was an equality he rather felt Marx would have found amusing. There were few places they could go to be alone, or just enjoy themselves, not with the alien craft looming in the background. The vast majority of people on the base hadn’t seen it after their first visit, yet they all knew that it was there.

  “I just keep thinking about what this all means,” Jane said, when Alex said nothing. He had heard that the best way to get someone to talk was not to fill the air with nonsense, or useless blether. “What does it mean for us that aliens exist?”

  Alex considered it, as if he’d given no thought to it at all. “We’re not alone any longer?”

  “Exactly,” Jane said. “We can no longer pretend that we’re alone in the universe. What will that do to our society? What will happen when Joe and Jane” – she smiled wryly -“Public learn about the crashed ship?”

  “People have been watching movies and television series about aliens for years,” Alex said, thoughtfully. “There might not be so much panic or fear.”

  Jane waved a hand towards the television. “We were watching Independence Day last night,” she reminded him. “The vast majority of movies concerning aliens have the aliens as implacable enemies, enemies that we have to kill before they kill us. I think that we’ll be lucky if we only have mass hysteria or complete panic. Tell the average person that aliens live around a distant star and they might just shrug and decide that it’s none of their business, not when they have a mortgage to pay off and three screaming brats to put through school, and it might not make much of an impact. Tell them that the aliens are touching Earth, even with a single ship, and there will be complete panic. Tell them that a billion aliens are coming to Earth and the entire world will go mad.”

  “I know,” Alex said. The alien statements the President had recorded were chilling. He couldn’t blame the aliens for wanting to control how they landed on Earth and integrated into human society, but there was something chilling about it, even without considering the military aspects. The other nations of Earth wouldn’t accept alien domination tamely. The Russians and Chinese still maintained vast nuclear stockpiles and a limited ASAT capability. The war could get very bloody. “But…”

  “I was thinking about the Native Americans, the Indians,” Jane continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “They were utterly unprepared for the Europeans when they arrived and the results were…unpleasant.”

  “Without that, you wouldn’t be here,” Alex said. “It didn’t have such a bad result.”

  “I wonder if that’s the justification that the aliens will use,” Jane said. “All the suffering, all the human suffering, will have a good result in the end as two cultures get fused together, the best of both passed on to later generations.”

  “If you believe them,” Alex said, flatly. He wasn't sure how much of the alien statements he believed. The aliens might believe everything they’d said, as vague and uninformative as most of it had been, but that didn’t guarantee understanding. Americans had problems understanding the Japanese or the Arabs and they were human, with a shared biology. The aliens might look at humanity and misinterpret everything they saw. “Their studies of Earth might have been imperfect…”

  Jane looked up at him. “They didn’t get
everything wrong,” she said, coldly. He heard an undertone of fear in her voice. “They copied me in on the medical data the aliens gave the President and I went through it with my team. It was…accurate. It was surprisingly accurate. Maybe not absolutely perfect – few medical research papers are completely perfect – but very good. I could put it through the harshest peer review process in the world and it would pass.”

  “Bully for them,” Alex said. “I don’t understand the point.”

  “If you asked me, now, to come up with a cure for the five aliens we have in the quarantine centre, ignoring the fact that they are dead,” Jane asked, “do you think I could do it?”

  “…No,” Alex said.

  “Exactly,” Jane said. “We understand next to nothing about their biology or how it all really works. Without dissecting the bodies, or obtaining live specimens to study, I don’t think that we are going to get much further in a hurry. We’re still studying their body chemistry and trying to figure out where there is such a high degree of dimorphism between the three observed types of alien. I’m pretty sure they all come from the same origin world – they share too much in common for it to be anything else – but why they’re so different…”

  She shrugged. “Give me a few years, a research team and no worries about their treatment of the dead to worry about, and perhaps – perhaps – I would be able to come up with something they could use,” she continued. “I wouldn’t be confident of success, but I should learn something, if only by trial and error. They, on the other hand, provided us with cures we could put into production and start distributing right now. The implications are disturbing.”

  “Every year, thousands of people go missing,” Alex said, slowly. He’d studied alien abductions, or the reports of alien abductions, and knew that some researchers wondered if the aliens sometimes took people permanently, without returning them to Earth. There were thousands of unsolved missing people cases, from all walks to life. Runaways, kidnap victims…had some of them been taken to space and dissected? “Are you suggesting that the aliens abducted humans after all?”