First Contact (23 page)

A
T
G
REEK
I
SLAND
II,
Ralph grew increasingly agitated. Jessica was more than three hours late. He tried her cell phone several times but she did not pick up. He paced around the facility. He tried to calm himself by drinking a glass of lemonade, which had been prepared from a powdered mix, but it did nothing. The operations people assured him cell phones should work from the bunker—“unless you got Verizon,” one of them said with a laugh—but Ralph had his doubts. He paced for another hour and drank another cup of lemonade, which only seemed to be making things worse, and then finally demanded to be let out.

“Afraid we can’t do that,” said Major William Buckner, the commander of Greek Island II. Major Buckner’s first decision had been to prepare a large tub of powdered lemonade to make the new guests feel at home. The major had a gentle, nurturing spirit, a defense mechanism against the revulsion people normally felt for him if they were from Boston, as he unfortunately was. This tender manner was particularly conspicuous in a military man. He knew how to make a fine lemonade, though, so his first decision was a big hit. His second decision, telling Ralph Bailey he could not go outside, was less popular.

“Look,” Ralph said, “my fiancée is still out there and her cell phone isn’t working. I think she was in an accident. I need to go find her.”

“Don’t think you understand, sir. The last of the congressmen arrived about a half hour ago. We’re under lockdown now. The doors cannot be opened until the threat has passed.”

“Is there any immediate threat?”

“None of which we are aware, sir, but those are the rules.”

“This is crazy. I am just asking you to open the doors for a moment.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The rules are the rules.”

Ralph could see he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Buckner. He sized up the situation and saw his only option was to go for one of the officer’s guns and demand to be let out. He was seriously considering this course of action when the President walked into the command center to a chorus of “Good evening, Mr. President.”

“I have been looking for you, Ralph.”

Ralph muttered a reply of “Yes, sir.” He wanted to make his case to the President, but he knew the chance of getting a word in before the President said whatever he came to say was precisely nil.

“Seems I have myself a case of the munchies,” the President said. “I was thinking you might run out and get me a sandwich, Ralph. We looked it up and there’s a Blimpway on Main Street that’s open until nine. It’s just a short walk.”

Major Buckner intervened. “We can have the cook whip you up something if you like, Mr. President.”

“Thank you, Major, but no. You guys have nothing but army rations. A man cannot live on that alone. Ralph knows what I like. It won’t be any trouble at all for him.”

“Sir, we are under lockdown as of nineteen hundred hours. Our protocols do not allow for those doors to be lifted until the threat has passed.”

“Well, is there anything on the radar? Have the satellites detected anything?”

The major looked in the direction of a sergeant seated in front of a series of screens. The sergeant shook his head in silent reply.

“Not at the moment, Mr. President,” Major Buckner said.

“Well then, it can’t cause very much harm, now can it?”

“I’m just not sure it’s a very good idea.”

The President smiled and put his hand on the major’s shoulder.

“Relax, Major. The world isn’t going to end. And it certainly isn’t going to end in the next twenty minutes. So why don’t you listen to the commander in chief and let my assistant out to get me a sandwich.”

The major followed orders, as he had been trained to do. He told the sergeant to open the twenty-five-ton doors so Ralph could walk into town and get the President a Blimpway sandwich. Ralph, who could scarcely believe his luck, could not get on his way quickly enough. As he hastened to leave, the President called to him.

“Make sure they put extra meat on the sandwich,” the President said.

As fate would have it, these would be the last words the President would ever speak to Ralph Bailey.

A
S SOON AS
R
ALPH
emerged from Greek Island II, he called Jessica on his cell phone. This time she picked up, and Ralph exhaled an enormous sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness,” he said. “I have been trying to reach you for hours.”

“I have been trying to reach you too,” she said. “I was stuck in a horrible traffic jam on I–66. I couldn’t get through to you on my cell phone. I guess everybody was trying to call at once.”

“I was so worried.”

“I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do.” Sheepishly, Jessica said, “The worst part is I caused the whole thing.”

Alarmed, Ralph asked, “Were you in an accident?”

“A guy slowed up at the top of a hill and I struck him in the rear. His car spun out, stopped across the lanes, couldn’t move. It set off
a catastrophic chain reaction. Traffic backed up for miles. It took hours for the police and tow truck to get through.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jessica said.

“The car?”

“It’s good enough. I’m moving now.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m near Lexington, Virginia. I should be to you in about four hours.”

“I’m just happy you’re okay,” Ralph said. “I was so worried.”

At that moment Jessica, who was driving in a westerly direction, noticed what appeared to be a missile streaking through the sky at breakneck speed. She slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.

“Do you see that?” she asked.

“I do,” Ralph said. It was almost directly over his head, hurtling toward Earth. His heart sunk. He immediately understood the implications of this. Hundreds of similar missiles would be heading toward Earth to punish the planet for its transgressions. And the great irony was that the man responsible for all of it was safe and sound 128 feet underground behind twenty-five-ton steel doors. Ralph and Jessica, on the other hand, would be killed in the atomic blast or die from radiation soon thereafter because of a freak car accident and the President’s taste for Blimpway sandwiches.

Ralph thought to himself, “Life is funny.”

He said to Jessica. “I’m sorry. I wanted us to be together more than you can imagine.”

Jessica’s glow radiated from the phone.

“Don’t fret,” she said. “It’s not the end. In fact it’s only the beginning.”

“I don’t understand how you can know something like that.”

“Just trust me,” she said.

“I do,” Ralph said, and he did.

“And love me,” she said.

“I do,” Ralph said.

And he did.

I
N
G
REEK
I
SLAND
II,
Major Buckner sounded the alarm. The President arrived quickly, munching on some peanuts. Major Buckner
informed the President that a missile had been detected heading toward Earth.

“Don’t you mean missiles, Major?”

“No, Mr. President, just one missile. Furthermore, it appears the alien ship that launched the missile is returning to the wormhole.”

The President considered the implications of this for a moment.

“So this is the extent of the attack?” he asked.

“It appears that way, sir.”

“What city is its target?”

Major Buckner checked the instruments. He said, “No major city, Mr. President. It appears to be heading toward West Virginia.”

“Where exactly?”

The major checked the instruments again.

“Here, sir,” the Major said. “It appears to be heading here.”

The President stopped eating his peanuts. “How long do we have?” he asked.

“About twenty seconds.”

“Oh,” said the President.

T
WENTY SECONDS IS NOT
very much time to reflect on a life. The President had only four final thoughts.

His fourth-to-last thought was that he had forgotten to give Ralph money for the sandwich.

His third-to-last thought was that he had forgotten to pay Ralph for all of the other sandwiches.

His penultimate thought was to wonder whether, in the end, his father would have approved of him and the choices he had made in his life.

His final thought, just as the missile approached, was that he had ruined his last good pair of underwear.

T
HE MISSILE STRUCK WITH
exquisite precision. Though it had been launched from a spaceship 400,000 miles away, the missile hit its target precisely, streaking down the very shaft up which Sam Snead had hit his miraculous shot many years earlier. It was a small missile, but it packed a wallop.

The missile killed all of the people in the bunker. However, it left their personal effects undisturbed. In addition to loathing
violence, the Rigelians were quite neat and had a long-standing policy of doing as little property damage as possible. The Rigelian missile perfected the aspiration of the neutron bomb, the chic weapon of the 1960s, fashionable because its reliance on radiation rather than heat killed people while leaving buildings intact. The many items not destroyed inside Greek Island II included the President’s peanuts, the stash of pornography the Speaker of the House always carried in his briefcase, and the remainder of Major Buckner’s delicious lemonade.

Remarkably, the missile caused no disturbance to the golfers on the Greenbrier golf course. A player on the thirteenth green, who had struck a putt just as the missile touched ground, watched in eager anticipation as the ball stayed true to its course and fell into the cup for an improbable eagle. In fact, the missile might have gone completely unnoticed but for the small matter of its destroying the American government.

A
S THINGS TURNED OUT
,
the President’s dying word was, “Oh.” This bon mot would be lost for all time, as all of the people within earshot met their demise during the destruction of Greek Island II. So far as the annals of history were concerned, the President’s dying words were, “Make sure they put extra meat on the sandwich.” At the time he said this, he was unaware he would die in less than twenty minutes. If he had been so aware, one likes to believe he would have come up with something pithier.

D
YING WORDS SAY A
lot about people, just as the three things they would bring with them to a desert island do, and so too the manner in which they treat waiters and children.

Some people say things showing they really don’t get it. On his deathbed, the obscenely wealthy entrepreneur and showman P. T. Barnum (d. 1891) grimly asked, “How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?”

On the other hand, some people say profound things suggesting they really do get it. For example, Humphrey Bogart (d. 1957) said, “I never should have switched from scotch to martinis.”

Sometimes people display extraordinary grace. After being shot sixteen times, Malcolm X (d. 1966) said to his assassins, “Let’s cool it, brothers.”

Some are touching. On his deathbed, President James K. Polk (d. 1849) said to his wife, “I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you.”

Some are brilliant. Oscar Wilde’s (d. 1900) dying words were: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

Some forsake the process altogether. Urged by his housekeeper to speak his last words so she could record them for posterity Karl Marx (d. 1883) said, “Go on, get out—last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”

Some experience revelations, such as film producer Louis Mayer (d. 1957) who said, “Nothing matters. Nothing matters.”

Some die quietly, like Teddy Roosevelt (d. 1919) who said, “Put out the light.”

And then there is Timothy Leary (d. 1996) who said, finally, “Why not? Yeah.”

S
O FAR AS
I
can determine, the English language has no word for a person’s dying declaration. An “epitaph” is a summary statement of a person’s life, the kind of thing that goes on a tombstone. A “thanatopsis” is a meditation upon death. It was also a poem by William Cullen Bryant. It comes close, but does not describe the pithy epigrams the Oscar Wildes of the world speak on their deathbeds.

I hereby propose we adopt “epitomb” to describe this familiar phenomenon. I am hopeful that along with the “Sneedle,” it will be part of my lasting legacy to the people of Earth.

I
HAVE HAD A
premonition of what my own epitomb will be.

I think it will be: “Oh shit.”

I would rather it be: “This milk has turned bad.”

Whatever it is, I would prefer the words be spoken in Latin. Anything is more elegant when spoken in Latin, particularly epitombs, such as John Wilkes Booth’s “
Sic semper tyrannis
.”

Unless one lives in ancient Rome, of course, in which case it just seems ordinary.

W
HILE
I
DID NOT
mind knocking off the President and Len Carlson, I disliked killing Joe Quimble, who loved the Constitution, and William Buckner, who made such fine lemonade, and the press secretary Martha Jones, whom we hardly knew. I particularly disliked
killing David Prince, who seemed like a nice person and who shared my geeky taste for science fiction movies.

In general, I don’t like harming things. I am one of those people who picks up ants in the house and moves them outside. The crickets in my basement are made to feel at home. I do a lot of my writing outside on a laptop. Sometimes these little red gnats crawl across the screen. They can be a nuisance. I try to brush them off the screen gently, but in so doing I once killed one and felt bad about it for the rest of the day. You get the picture.

I made sure Sam Snead did not harm the parrot he hit with his golf ball and that Nelson Munt-Zoldarian did not seriously injure anyone with his reckless driving. But, in my opinion, the President and the cabinet had to suffer for the sake of the story.

War is hell.

So as not to grow too attached to these people, I kept the descriptions of them sketchy. I did not discuss their families, for example, though they each had one. I purposely chose not to give them hobbies or toupees or any of the many things that make people human. I left them as caricatures.

The argument could be made that my depriving them of depth was itself tantamount to murder since I deprived them of the opportunity to develop into fully realized human beings. But I did not want to knock off people to whom I—and you—might feel attached.

It is true I could have invented a fantastic scenario to get some of these people out of the bunker, which in fairness is precisely what I did to save Ralph. But this would have taken some doing. I suppose all of the nice ones could have developed a case of the munchies at the same time. They could have all gone to Blimpway together and been having a fun time eating subs just as the missile arrived. As it is, it was a stretch to get Ralph out of the bunker. So I just made the best of an imperfect situation, which I suppose is all anyone can ever do.

I do feel guilty, though, and am quite sorry these concepts of living creatures were harmed in the writing of this story. It may be small consolation, but I have tried to leave things as neat as possible.