“OK. You heard her, let’s go and find out what those other clowns have been up to.”
Nine
In breaking news today, it has been revealed that a large asteroid has been detected with a trajectory that will bring it close to Earth. The National Observatory is reporting there is no danger of the asteroid colliding with Earth. However, this is the largest object ever detected by modern early-warning systems designed to detect asteroids and other celestial objects that could be a danger to the planet. The asteroid is well known to astronomers and is, or was, one of the larger asteroids making up the Jupiter Trojans, a group of objects sharing the orbit of the planet Jupiter around the Sun.
What is not understood is how the asteroid, known as 2920 Automedon, came to be on this course, because formerly Automedon had a fairly stable orbit and was never considered any sort of impact threat. Something, possibly a collision with another asteroid or another undetected impact event, has knocked the asteroid off its normal course – one that could have remained relatively consistent for hundreds of millions of years – and sent it spinning into the inner solar system.
Astronomers are reporting Automedon is a large asteroid, some 20 kilometres in length, and would cause catastrophic damage to Earth if it impacted. Astronomers will be watching the asteroid closely for several reasons, primarily because it is a large asteroid and, unusually, its current path has it passing between the Earth and the moon, and because they don’t know how it came to be shunted out of its former orbit in the first place.
Should we be concerned? The Chief Astronomer had this to say: “The universe is a large and dangerous place and we don’t have the capacity or capability to keep a watch over all the night skies and look out for all the potential threats. Automedon was, until recently, a matter of passing interest and was not on any watch list of potential threats. Our planet has been impacted by asteroids many times in the past, and it is inevitable it will be impacted again in the future. However, on the balance of probabilities, this asteroid will pass well clear of Earth and there is no need to panic.”
In other news, the government has asked everyone to remain calm and to stop panic buying from supermarkets. There have been concerns about maintaining law and order and some instances of looting in several cities. Officials are not planning to declare an emergency at this stage but have not ruled it out if required.
In other breaking news and in an apparent U-turn over his opposition to the space program, presidential candidate Ronald Chump has come out in support of the embattled President Mitchell and thrown his weight behind a massive increase in funding for the development of a new generation of rapid-turnaround, reusable space launchers.
This apparent about-face in philosophy comes as a surprise to most pundits as Ronald Chump has had long-standing objections to space exploration on the grounds it, along with most other government spending, is a waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. His view on the moon landings were that the Apollo program was a carefully managed deception orchestrated by the government and stage-managed by Hollywood in order to hide the money spent funding a one-world government whose troops were massing on the Canadian border getting ready to invade the United States.
Previously, when asked why there had been no invasion in the forty years since the last Apollo flight, Chump has maintained the view that only the might of the combined US armed forces had prevented an invasion and the United States is in constant danger of attack. Even as recently as last week Chump maintained that if the government relented, the United States would become suborned into a one-world government run out of the UN in New York within a few weeks.
Mr Chump has also maintained it is not the government’s role to fund exploration or research, that is the role of business, and taxpayer money spent in these areas would be better left in the taxpayer’s pocket.
Ronald Chump has given no insight into his reasons for this apparent turnaround in philosophy. However, he has angered many of his colleagues and supporters, and a quick street poll reveals that he has now fallen victim to Washington special-interest groups and no longer fully represents popular views. He has now added many of his presumed core electorate to the ever-growing number of Americans who consider him to be unelectable.
Ronald Chump’s office was not taking calls today. Several prominent backers and his own former campaign manager have said that this about-face has almost certainly cost Chump dearly and that he can kiss any presidential aspirations goodbye.
“Chump has sold his people down the river, he has betrayed his principles and the people will not stand for this,” said a Facebook post from a now ex-supporter.
Ten
Trev’s bar was empty. A pretty normal state of affairs for the lull period – late morning after the breakfast crowd had come and gone and just before the early lunchtime crowd arrived. All his staff were either on a break or not due to start a shift yet. Trev wondered, as he often did, why he didn’t just close the place for an hour or so at this time of the day and put his feet up. On the other hand, he thought, you never really knew from one day to the next who might come in for a coffee and or a meal. One day the place was empty for hours on end, as it was today, then the next half the town seemed to be there and he was run off his feet because he had not rostered on enough staff.
Mind you, there were compensations. When the bar was empty, as it was today, Trev liked to sit back in one of the easy chairs in front of the television with a pot of coffee, with a dash of whiskey thrown in and a nice cream-filled lamington, and enjoy one of the rabid right-wing news shows on cable. Today the star of the show was Ronald Chump, who was making a rather poor job of explaining his turnaround regarding the government funding of space exploration and Nasa in particular.
Trev found the shows far more entertaining than informative. He in no way subscribed to their, in his opinion, ignorant, intolerant, extremely narrow-minded view of the world. This was a personal view that appeared quite at odds with that of most of his clientele when they stared with rapt attention at the television and loudly discussed the hot topics of the day while knocking back a cup of coffee or a drink.
Trev found most of the politics and attitudes distasteful in the extreme, notably because the positions and opinions presented were founded on an ideology he believed was dated and based more on an assumption of a God-given right rather than the realities of the modern world. In fact, the shows seemed to be aimed at grumpy old white men, a dying breed in this country.
The politics also jarred with a world view that he was not going to own up to in front of a crowd of possibly gun-toting good old boys who liked nothing better than to stand up for the constitutional rights they believed some foreign-inspired, left-wing nutjob was planning to take away from them. For the life of him he failed to understand why an apparently intelligent and personable group had such execrable attitudes to people with different political views from their own.
The news, which was consumed by the asteroid heading for the planet, was interesting enough on an intellectual level, but despite the sensationalist reporting Trev was pretty sure the danger of it hitting the planet was minimal. Besides, if the asteroid did smash into the planet there was not a whole lot anyone could do about it, even if the good old boys thought the government should do something about it seconds after a story agreeing that big government was un-American. None of the presenters or the punters seemed to recognise the contradictions in the statements.
Trev struggled with the ambiguity on display at times like this, when the right-wing nutjobs cried out for government assistance for their pet projects, in the same breath challenging the government around putting money into space research and demanding a reduction in the tax take.
This was one time he thought the government would probably be doing the right thing if they failed to tell the truth if there was an asteroid on its way, because there was nothing anyone would be able to do about it and there was no need to go about worrying people unnecessarily until the end and it was obvious it wou
ld hit. Trev could not begin to imagine the chaos on the streets if a big asteroid was actually aimed at them – they’d all be fucked one way or another.
And this Ronald Chump guy was a first-class dickhead. Trev failed to understand why the Americans seemed to elect or champion people to senior state and federal positions who, to an outsider, were just straight-out peculiar, alarmingly peculiar, and downright ignorant. People who actually seemed proud to flout their ignorance and lack of tolerance for the beliefs of others with opposing views to their own. Their own narrow philosophies in many cases clearly defied logic and common sense, and some of them were simply just plain nasty pieces of work who seemed to think it was okay to achieve their objectives or fulfil their ideological aims by any means available to them. These were the sort of people who believed carpet bombing ISIS back to the stone age was a logical long-term strategy.
Most of the Americans he knew possessed the same broad aspirations as he did, but their politics polarised them in a way that was completely foreign to him, and they were not interested in the least in helping anyone other than themselves. The largely unspoken social contract he was used to, one ensuring that basically everyone had access to the basic requirements of life and it was society’s responsibility to look after those less fortunate, did not exist here in any form.
Ronald Chump appeared to be in the vanguard of the crowd, which seemed particularly insular and intolerant. According to Trev’s view of the world, these guys lived in their own little fantasy world that seemed to give them some kind of entitlement to act as they please. They were just like the Taliban or ISIS in many ways, they just had a different, yet equally fundamental creed with bigger guns and more power to impose their will on everyone else.
But something odd seemed to have happened to Chump over the last few days – his demeanour had changed and he had come out in support of NASA, an organisation he had targeted with some vehemence up till now and alienated a big chunk of his support base in the process.
However, in a funny sort of way, politics and politicians, and the government, seemed to be an irrelevance to most people. Oh, they followed the rule of law mostly and paid their taxes. But in many places around the country he had been in the past few years, the government, even local government, was barely tolerated, and to an outsider it appeared the country was permanently on the verge of some kind of civil insurrection. More interesting to him was that he was now living in one of the more tolerant cities in one of the most liberal states in America. He shuddered to think what it must be like living in the more extreme communities around the nation.
Trev thought it was a funny way to run a country, until he thought about it a little bit more honestly, about some of the clowns he had seen elected to office back in New Zealand, and the damage they could cause in a very short time. The leftist parties were full of people who had never done a decent day’s productive work in their lives and, as far as he could tell, had contributed to building a nanny state at the expense of encouraging self-reliance. From a distance it seemed the loony left had lost its shape and purpose as the centre right stole the middle ground from them when they were not looking. A state of affairs which would not last forever, he mused thoughtfully.
They’re all the same really. They were all a bunch of parasites and he had not bothered to vote in the last few elections anyway. This Chump bloke just had a much bigger audience and support base than any politician back home, where he would fit right in with any of the small lunatic fringe special-interest parties.
Trev was still pondering this further when a customer coming through the door interrupted him.
“Hi, Trev,” a familiar sounding voice addressed him as he stood up to serve them. “How about a drink for a girl?”
Trev was more than a little taken aback to discover Sue walking through the bar and sitting herself on a barstool at the counter.
“What can I get you?” he asked, automatically pouring a beer for Bruce who he assumed would be right behind her. A couple of men in expensive looking suits had followed Sue in. One of them turned his back to the bar and faced the door while the other one approached the counter. Trev could see an earplug with a cable disappearing down the neck of the guy with his back towards him and the other one had a big bulge in his armpit.
“A beer for starters. Oh, don’t worry,” Sue said, trying to put Trev at ease as his eyes flicked nervously toward the two men. “They’re with me. Or should I say ‘here to make sure I don’t get into more trouble than I already am’.”
“Ok,” Trev began, not sure how to respond this statement. “And where’s Bruce?”
“I’m not really sure to be honest and right at this moment I don’t really care either. The bastard,” she added vehemently. “Has left me.”
“Already?” Trev exclaimed incredulously. “I don’t believe you. This is some kind of joke, isn’t it? You’re having me on? Aren’t you?”
“No,” Sue sobbed. Her shoulders heaved and she leant over the bar and rested her head on her crossed arms.
Trev still half expected Bruce to walk through the door and have a good laugh at his expense. He glanced at the two men and thought about offering them a drink but they looked almost official in some ways so he was not sure how to respond without looking stupid or getting himself into trouble. He thought they must be security guys of some form or another, given one of them was wearing the earplug, just like a Secret Service agent in the movies, and he was sure they both had guns. Why Sue would need a security guard, let alone two, confused him.
He looked at her and decided her tears were real, she was really crying. He felt his heart give a great lurch and start to thump behind his ribs so hard he thought he might have a heart attack. If I play my cards right, I’m in here, he thought. Then his conscience got the better of him, what little there was of one, and he blushed guiltily.
“There, there.” Trev patted Sue gently on her shoulder. She wasn’t the first heartbroken woman he had consoled at the bar. He whipped his hand away quickly when the man watching the two of them made to get out of his chair and gave him a threatening look.
“OK,” he said, holding his hands up where they could be seen. “Can I get you guys a cup of coffee or something?” he asked. “I make a mean flat white,” he added, though it was clear from the expression of the dark guy that he had no idea what a flat white was and maybe, by the way he stared at him with his mouth half open, thought Trev was making some kind of racial slur.
“Can’t hurt,” said the man watching the door. “I don’t know what a flat white is but I’ll have an Americano with milk and sugar, and he’ll have a latte.”
For the life of him, Trev could never understand why anyone would put milk in a decent cup of black coffee, and often commented about it, but he let it slide this time.
As he busied himself behind the espresso machine he managed to gulp down the beer he had poured for Bruce and mix himself a rather large vodka, lime and lemonade and one for Sue as well.
“There you go, love,” he said, placing the drink in front of her. “Have something a little stronger and then you can tell Uncle Trevor all about it once I’ve given these guys their coffee.” Like barmen across the world, Trev had long since become accustomed to having people spill their guts to him – drunk, almost drunk or pretty well sober – about any subject under the sun. In terms of their relationship issues he had heard it all. While he had no skills as a counsellor at least he thought he was a pretty good listener and nobody had complained yet.
“There you go, gents,” Trev said, placing the coffees on the table.
“Thank you, Mr Todd, much appreciated,” they replied politely, almost in unison. “Now make yourself another drink and come and sit down with us for a chat.”
How do these guys know who I am? Trev wondered in something of a panic, as the man, well he was some kind of agent, flipped out his official-looking wallet card to identify himself. Trev was too shaken to actually see which agency the men were from, but
he was not about to resist, and nodded numbly. What the hell had Bruce and Sue got themselves involved in, and by default, it appeared him?
“I didn’t agree to that when I brought you here,” Sue snapped from where she sat at the bar.
Trev glanced at Sue. Her tears had been pretty convincing, but maybe they were not so real after all.
“Excuse me, Mrs Harwood, this is an investigation with serious national security implications. You would do well to remember this, and we will ask Mr Todd as many questions as we see fit.”
This time the tears that ran down Sue’s face were real. She sagged against the bar with all the stuffing had been knocked out of her.
“You’re all as bad as each other,” she lamented. Trev assumed all this had something to do with Bruce. “Your promises are worthless. Don’t listen to them, Trev. They’ll make you promises they have no intention of keeping, and if that fails they’ll simply threaten you.”
“Mrs Harwood. You would do well to remember that you made a number of promises to the Government of the United States you have yet to fulfil and, to be honest, it appears you are unable to deliver on most, if not all, of those undertakings.”
Sue opened and closed her mouth a few times, but she had been rendered speechless by the agent’s statement.
“And,” the agent added, reminding her, “you would do well to remember you could yet be held to account for making those promises if it is determined you knew full well at the time that they were beyond your ability to fulfil.” Apparently satisfied with himself the agent who had flashed his card at Trev nodded to his partner, who stood and locked the door to the bar.
“Is the back door locked from the inside?” the first agent asked.
Trev nodded.
“Anybody apart from us in this place?”
“Not at the moment,” Trev mumbled. “My lunchtime crew will be here in fifteen minutes or so,” he added after checking his watch.
The Lifeboat Page 26
