by Geoff Wolak
That night, America fractured.
The next day, protestors took to the streets of America, and the streets of many cities around the world, many in Clayton’s own administration now seriously concerned at what two of their most trusted senators had claimed. Several quit and walked out, each expressing their own concerns to the press. Clayton, meanwhile, was scratching his head over the comments by Hal, since Hal had been a staunch ally for years. He called Hal and Hacker into the White House.
In the Oval Office, President Clayton stepped in to find Hal and Hacker sat looking smug. They didn’t bother to get up. ‘What the hell is going on?’ Clayton asked, but in a friendly and pleading tone. ‘Where’s all this come from? There’re no mother ships approaching us.’
‘We work for Jimmy Silo,’ Hal informed Clayton, enjoying the look on the President’s face. ‘And he’s had people on this world for decades. You should have considered that you were up against a time traveller, and not been such an asshole.’
‘You two … you work for Silo?’ Clayton repeated, staring wide-eyed.
‘Yes, we’re time travellers, and over a hundred years old,’ Hacker explained. ‘And as for the mother ships in orbit … you’ll pick them up on radar in a few days.’
‘What?’ Clayton gasped after a moment’s thought.
‘They’re real enough,’ Hal stated. ‘And you, you son of a bitch, you trusted the Zim. There are millions of them out there, and they think they’ll find a warm welcome here. The Zim you’ve been dealing with up to now, they’re just the scouting group in the other time line.
‘And in case you hadn’t check chronometers, this time line is a year or so behind the time you opened a portal to over there. The Zim who landed over there have twins in this time line – who’ll land over here, arriving soon in their great big mother ships.’
The Chief of Staff had sat, but now eased up. ‘Mother ships?’
‘Twenty six of them,’ Hal said towards the man, and with some attitude. ‘You’ve been lied to, and fooled.’
‘You know our future?’ the Chief of staff just about demanded.
Hal nodded as he stared up at the man. Softly, he said, ‘All out war.’
‘War?’ Clayton queried. ‘I don’t believe it. And the Zim are outgunned, even with their fancy craft.’
Hal shook his head. ‘You’ve been dealing with two mother ships and ninety small craft. You’ll be up against a thousand small craft, and mother ships that could wipe out a city from orbit.’
‘So why are you here?’ the Chief scoffed. ‘You didn’t come here just to be killed.’
‘No, we didn’t come here just to be killed,’ Hal confirmed. ‘We’ve been making plans to save your asses.’
‘What … plans?’ Clayton demanded.
‘They don’t concern you, Mister President, since there are a few people across time and space that would like to see you put on trial for war crimes – and the shooting down of an airliner.’
Clayton flinched, visibly shocked, but angered quickly. ‘You two are impostors, and I’ll have you exposed and locked up.’
‘Will you?’ Hal asked as he stood. ‘As far as the electorate is concerned … I’m a legitimate senator, my DNA is correct, my life history provable. And -’ He edged closer. ‘- to expose us you’d need to explain just where the heck we came from, and who sent us. You … prepared to say that on national TV?’
Clayton stared back, furious but controlled.
Hal edged even closer. ‘You’ll also have a problem with my colleagues in the Senate, and with the American people. Presidents … don’t lock up senators, not even with emergency powers in place. So, we’ll be leaving, and you … you can think about those mother ships. Go ask your alien buddies why those ships are coming – and what they expect from you.’
Outside of the White House, Hal and Hacker approached the bank of cameras.
‘My fellow Americans,’ Hal began. ‘We’ve just met with the President, if indeed that is the President. My sources tell me that these aliens can change their appearance and make themselves look like us, like any one of us. I fear that the President has been replaced by one of these aliens, as well as key figures in the CIA and the military. President Clayton did not deny that mother ships are approaching, but when I asked him about things we discussed many years ago he didn’t know the answers. My fellow Americans, I think the President is an impostor.’
Hacker eased forwards. ‘I second that, and I tried to test the President’s memory, but he refused to be drawn on it. His DNA needs to be tested.’
With Hal and Hacker being whisked away, America moved rapidly towards chaos, and complete meltdown. If martial law was not justified before, Clayton had his excuse now – a genuine need for control. But sitting US Presidents could not declare martial law nationwide, not as the constitution stood, so Clayton declared war on the alien aggressors, thereby empowering FEMA with “states of emergency” across America. The National Guard was ordered to mobilise, the police to militarise, soldiers to return from overseas to help out. The FBI were hurriedly armed, heavily armed.
By the time CNN was running the 10pm news, America was under de-factor martial law, and even private security contractors had been signed up. Retired and former servicemen were asked to return to duty, as were ex-police officers. Hal and Hacker, meanwhile, had disappeared, changed appearances, and were now driving out of Washington via the back roads. Blood had been left behind at their residences, several private security guards shot dead, offices ransacked.
An email about the apparent armed abduction of the two prominent senators had been sent to various agencies at 9.30pm, and now CNN ran the story. The news was met with an incredulous stare by Clayton, since he now suspected that some of those around him were acting without prior permission. His second reason for being worried was that the senior Zim officials had mostly disappeared. His house of cards was starting to collapse.
Outside of America, the rest of the world was in panic mode, and many world leaders actually believed that Clayton had been replaced by an alien. Ngomo caught the news, early morning in the Congo, and signalled his men to make ready. Big Paul had also caught the news in Britain, and in turn signalled his own men.
As Clayton held an emergency meeting of his coalition cabinet, one Democrat having already walked out, reports suddenly came in of portals opening – the energy spikes detected. Panicked, Clayton dispatched National Guard and police units to the two locations pinpointed, only to find empty highways, and no signs of anyone. Portals were registered as opening in a dozen other places, mainly around New York and Washington, soldiers soon seen on the streets rushing to various areas – and scaring the populace, who were worried enough already.
Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Boston followed, police and soldiers rushing around, the press now puzzling the movements – no explanations forthcoming. Then came the first incident, as Jimmy had coldly planned for. People were seen moving away from a suspected portal site, and fired upon, the images of the dead and wounded – a school party – flashed across the TV screens. Clayton had no choice but to move, and enacted further powers, this time to shut down the media. The TV screens turned blank, and newspapers were suspended by FEMA’s executive order.
On many a hilltop across America, and in many a rural backwater, no further evidence was needed. It was time for the people to take matters into their own hands.
In West Virginia, in a roadside motel, Hal turned to Hacker. ‘Just light the blue touch paper … and stand well back.’
‘People here don’t trust the federal government, and they hate being told what to do,’ Hacker sullenly noted. ‘The Army don’t mix well with civilians here, and Jimmy is counting on that fact.’
‘On top of the fear of aliens, and alien impersonators, they’ll not know who to trust.’ Hal shook his head. ‘What a mess.’ He sighed. ‘But Jimmy did say that the egg needed to be cracked first.’
Roadblocks had appeared where repeated portal signals
had been detected, and soldiers checked people in their vehicles, attitude displayed towards the soldiers, and attitude given back. It was little more than two hours after the TV screens had gone blank that the first patrol of soldiers was fired upon by civilians – the civilians as well armed as their own army, that army paid for with the civilians’ tax dollars.
Fearing the alleged alien invasion, and not trusting Clayton anymore, many rural communities armed themselves and took to the streets. Those armed patrols met soldiers and police, and the first few incidents took place, more misunderstandings than anything else.
There were no reassuring words coming from the White House, and a lack of news quickly led to the creation of mistrust and paranoia, local radio stations defying the media ban - and spouting nonsense to the local populations. Some of those local populations had been fiercely opposed to aliens to start with, and inanely suspicious of the federal government. Now they had every excuse they could think of to arm, and to organise themselves.
Clayton had suspended the media, but that media was a two-way street, and Clayton was not watching what was going on in Backwater USA, was not judging the mood, and was not thinking tactically. By suspending the media he had done exactly what Jimmy had wanted, and had created a vacuum of suspicion and mistrust - accentuated by the layered and overlapping political structures of American society; federal government, state legislators, local councillors, town mayors.
More than any country in the world, America had been conceived as a divided nation, a nation divided by states and counties, each of which had its own legislature and political flavouring. All it needed was an emergency of this type, and a clampdown on the media, and the bedrock fractured. There was no foreign enemy to unite the people, the enemy was in the White House; the enemy was within.
Later that day, America lost contact with all of its embassies in Africa and Europe, and several in South and Central America, Clayton puzzling the news. Advanced technology had been used, but - as Jimmy had hoped for in his timing - was that advanced technology being employed by Jimmy, or by the Zim as some prelude to invasion? Of all of the people in America, Clayton was the one who fostered the greatest doubt of all.
At midnight, several military bases – spread right across the States – blacked out, all contact lost, more again in the Middle East losing their electronics. Now the Joint Chiefs were concerned, very concerned, most of the Zim having disappeared, a few captured trying to leave secure sites. None were talking, as usual, and now Clayton and his team had to face the real possibility that the Zim were up to something.
The next day, reports came in of police officers and soldiers being killed, thousands of them, spread right across America. Protestors were on the streets in the cities, protesting against a wide range of issues; the lack of a media, the presence of aliens, the imposition of de-facto martial law – or simply the rate of unemployment. Many of the groups, and their messages, were contradictory, but they all had one common factor – they were not happy. The White House was now ringed by soldiers and military vehicles, the road outside closed.
Then time stopped for President Clayton, the poor man suffering chest pains and sitting when he was presented with the news. That world’s best telescope had been utilised when an amateur astronomer spotted a reflection beyond Jupiter, and now Clayton held a grainy image of twenty six large ships approaching Earth.
Several members of his own team verbally assaulted Clayton, and had to be led away by the Secret Service, the military now seriously worried – not least because the Zim had previously been granted access to many of the military’s most secure facilities. Everyone felt betrayed, especially Clayton. Now, when he needed unity across the country like never before, he had chaos, most of the country’s soldiers tied-up fighting their own population - when they should be preparing a defence against the Zim.
At the motel, Hacker sat listening to the local radio station as it continued to illegally broadcast, the volume turned down low, Hal sat staring out of the window. The TV was on, a static message displayed: normal services have been suspended by order of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The screen altered, and Hacker turned his head to see new words. As he read the words, they sounded out over the local radio station.
‘In your darkest hour, we will be there with you. When you need us most, we will come.’
It was soon gone. ‘What was that?’ Hacker asked.
‘What?’ Hal said as he turned.
‘A message just popped up on the TV, and I heard it on the radio.’
‘What message?’
‘I think it may be Jimmy. It said he’d be there when they needed him.’
‘Odd, I don’t remember him saying anything.’
The day job
Back at the embassy on Seether, I dumped my bags and caught up on the gossip over a beer. The next morning we held a routine review of the various projects and outposts, all seemingly progressing well enough. On Cuba they were clearing roads around the islands, small groups of Seethans now to be seen farming some distance away from the main settlements around Havana.
The human population around Havana had grown steadily, something of a service sector now developing, the Seethans selling food to the ancestors, even starting to run a few restaurants, although the establishments were very basic; there were no set menus, credit cards were not taken or receipts given, and the roofs leaked when it rained.
The Cuban tourists had seen our staff create football pitches, and since they were football mad anyway they joined in, friendly matches played often. Oil was flowing copiously west of Havana, and a basic refinery created petrol for cars, trucks and tractors. Those vehicles had been brought across from 1938-world, where petrol-based vehicles could still be found, especially in South America, as well as in our version of Cuba itself. They had been bought up and shipped across, the Seethans familiar with such modes of transport.
The cargo ships that Admiral Forrestor had donated to us had been busily employed searching Caribbean islands for human survivors, and a few hundred of those survivors – rather the third generation descendants of those survivors - had been shipped back to our world, many in handcuffs, their mouths gagged like Hannibal Lector. Handling the feral survivors could often result in a nasty bite or two.
One innovate group of old sailors, over here for a bit of fun and nostalgia on the ocean wave, decided that they would try a bit of industrial-scale fishing. Nets had been found on a ship, since that ship had originally acted as a packaging vessel for a fishing fleet. The crew ran a rope between two ships, threaded the large net – which had plenty of holes in it – and let it drag behind for a few hours. Hauling it in with winches, they caught a large number of fish, but also sharks and dolphins, a few marlin, and plenty of over-sized tuna. The sharks were let go, but most had already drowned, and they tried to save as many dolphins as they could, certain that the people back on 2048 would be very upset.
With a large haul of fish sat in plastic crates, the crates were shoved into the freezers below decks, the freezers started up. The ships’ fishing activities continued for several days, till they figured they could store no more. They then considered heading back to Havana, but soon realised they had enough fish to feed everyone in Cuba ten times over. The fish would likely be wasted. They called me.
‘Sail to Texas,’ I suggested. ‘Hang on, I’ll get a map. Right, sail to … Galveston, and before you get there I’ll have the – you know – water depth surveyed and the port facilities. How long will it take you to get there?’
‘Say … three to four days.’
‘And the fish won’t perish?’ I asked.
‘No, all frozen.’
‘I’ll talk to the Preether and let them know, we’ll send some people down as well.’
I linked into our people down in Texas, and they quickly dispatched a team to Galveston to check out the port facilities, and to clear a road. A few of them had already journeyed part of the way, and drones wo
uld be used to make a proper survey of the port.
Figuring that I would like to be there, I packed a bag and grabbed a helicopter, a second helicopter to be used by the guards – who did not want me in that area without suitable protection. We flew down to Kansas, finding a Preethan colony that offered plenty of fuel, the Preethan soldiers marvelling over our helicopters.
Refuelled, we pressed on down to the main camp to spend the night, a good opportunity to catch up on the fine detail, and to see what the Preethans were doing with the airfield they had appropriated. That airfield now housed a dozen idle bomber aircraft and a squadron of idle fighters, ground vehicles and idle staff, quite a small army – if idle. They had cleaned the airfield well enough, bored-looking soldiers stood on guard around the perimeter. But, so far, the base had not been used to launch any attacks on the southern flanks of Seethan territory. It sat idle.
Oil was flowing in the area, the nearby refinery servicing the vehicles, more than enough petrol being produced – tankers ferrying it north up the Kansas road. And I was surprised by the Preethan commitment to this area. At this rate, the Preethans would win the economic race and end up dominating this world, not the Seethans. They certainly seemed to have a flair for expansion, and seemed more innovative than their lethargic counterparts in the north.
We flew on down to Galveston the next morning, a team of Preethans having already made the journey and cleared a road of most of the debris littering it. We landed near their party on the dockside, finding many Preethans swimming in the deep waters off the concrete jetty. Well, none of this lot had ever seen an ocean, and salt water jogged their DNA into action. For them, plunging into the clear water was like returning to the womb.
The concrete dockside was cracked in places, a few tall weeds growing, but overall it had withstood the test of time – and of being assaulted by annual storms lashing it with salt water. The previous metal sheds were just an outline though, a jagged edge of orange delineating where the cargo shed had once stood. Tall cranes were now laying on their sides, appearing as if they had all just given up and lay down to die in a group, all orange with rust, a mass suicide of redundant machinery. The anvil-shaped lumps of rusted metal used for tying up ships had withstood the salt water erosion, and I kicked them with my shoe. A bucket-full of rust fell off them, but they were otherwise solid.
