Second Contact, page 18
part #2 of Not Alone Series
Unsurprisingly, William Godfrey’s opening remarks ignored Billy altogether and were instead a direct and undisguised jab at Jack Neal. “It’s a shame that Prime Minister Cole has sent Jack to do his bidding,” he said, “much as President Slater did a year ago on this very show. I certainly hope, for the sake of the viewers, that Jack is better prepared on this occasion and won’t wilt like a daisy in the desert as he did last time.”
Godfrey had been around for long enough to know that politics had been more spectacle than substance for decades, but it often irked him that the spectacle had now morphed into little more than a mosaic of attention-catching soundbites. His philosophy had always been simple, however; whatever the game was and however he had to play it, he was there to win.
Joe Crabbe, last in the line, then grunted his introductory remarks at no one in particular: “Like de Clerk said, we’re in New York City. We’re doing a show for American TV, yet here I am surrounded by a billionaire Italian playboy, a corrupt British politician and an American PR guru who sold himself out to become another corrupt British politician’s right-hand man. This is a symptom of the wider problem: our national leadership is so weak that our voice has no hope of being heard inside a bloated supranational organisation like the GSC, let alone an organisation led by someone as rabidly anti-American as ‘Chairman’ Godfrey.”
Godfrey sighed and rolled his eyes, successfully masking the smug grin which momentarily crossed his lips. Despite what Crabbe seemed to think, he liked the ‘Chairman Godfrey’ address. He knew it sounded Maoist to some and ridiculous to others, which was why Crabbe said it with such derision, but to Godfrey it was a powerful prefix suitable for a man of his position. And just as importantly, it was his alone.
Marian de Clerk interjected as she sometimes did when conversation drifted off-topic, pointing out to Crabbe that there were no British parliamentarians on the panel. “Chairman Godfrey is here in his position as head of the Global Space Commission,” she said, “while Jack Neal was invited primarily in his capacity as a former high-profile advisor to President Slater, who was unable to accept our invitation to join the panel due to the understandably intense demands on her time.”
“Precisely,” Godfrey nodded, expressing gratitude for the clarification. “And as for the laughable personal accusation of anti-American bias…”
This time, Joe Crabbe interrupted. “People talk about a GSC cover-up,” he said, pounding the desk and getting into his flow. “But they aren’t even thinking about what could be going on behind the curtain. We all know how disappointed I was in my old friend Richard Walker when it came to pass that he really had been covering up the existence of alien life. But what I want us all to reflect on now is that the past year has absolved Richard of everything. On Crabbe Shoot Radio he spoke of ‘apocalyptic politics’ and a ‘toxic agenda of unification’ among the Eurocrats driving for a ‘one-world government’. Do you all remember that? And when our discussion turned to how we could best protect ourselves from space-borne threats, Richard said ‘we do it ourselves or we don’t do it at all’, or otherwise the aliens would be ‘the least of our worries’. Ladies and gentlemen, when I point to this man — this creature — who calls himself Chairman Godfrey, I don’t think I have to say any more. The globalists have already castrated our national space agency, and every other country’s to boot. If you don’t think our national militaries are next, you’re not paying attention!”
As Crabbe’s aggressively delivered words echoed in the studio, de Clerk held a hand towards Godfrey to invite his response.
“Well, for those of us in the real world,” he began with a barely disguised chuckle, “we are of course still waiting for Richard Walker to apologise for his indefensible decision to unilaterally hide the truth for so long. Joe, I imagine a lot of people would be more willing to listen to your viewpoints if you would take a few seconds to apologise on behalf of your old chum. If you had any decency you certainly would; but then, as with Walker, I suppose decency would be a lot to expect for a man of your… what’s the word… persuasion.”
“I have nothing to apologise for,” Crabbe snapped. “And even if I did, I’ll start swimming to the Moon before I start apologising to the likes of you. When your mouth opens, lies come out!”
Marian de Clerk tapped her desk twice. “Now that we’re all reacquainted… we have approximately seventeen commercial-free minutes to discuss ‘Fiore Frontiere: the future of space research?’ before moving on to our second topic, ‘Transparency at the GSC’. Despite the closer than normal subject matter of our two pre-set topics, both of which may entail elements of a discussion around the Kerguelen bolide, I will enforce a division between the topics as far as possible. We’ll begin now with some direct reactions to Timo’s recent announcement of his plans to develop a private space program under the name Fiore Frontiere. Chairman Godfrey, I expect that you might have something to say on this?”
“I know we’re getting to Kerguelen,” Godfrey said, “and I’ll respect the division of topics by addressing my own organisation’s transparency in due course. But this Fiore Frontiere nonsense doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and any discussion must begin with a word on the timing of his announcement. During a period of uncertainty over the nature of the event at Kerguelen, Mr Fiore wasted no time in making grandiose promises of outcomes he’ll never have to deliver, as is his way. Isn’t it, Timo? Someone with his level of influence should know that he has to be more responsible, but I suppose we shouldn’t expect too much responsibility from a man who has never done an hour’s work in his life and would rather waste his inherited fortune on ridiculous vanity projects than use it to alleviate poverty in the poorest regions of this planet he claims to care so much about.”
Timo’s expression gave little away in the face of Godfrey’s verbal onslaught; Emma’s practice techniques for keeping a poker face were already paying off.
“The ark, the observatory… you know, I can almost shrug my shoulders and say there’s no harm in being ambitious,” Godfrey went on. “We will do those things in time, of that I’m sure. But Reciprocity? A probe of that nature is nothing but a transparently colossal waste of money, and it simply cannot be justified when so many people are starving. Just like Voyager before it — 40,000 years for those Golden Records to reach the nearest star! — this is nothing more than another back-slapping endeavour by an out-of-touch scientific elite and a slap in the face for those who do so much to stretch limited resources in their efforts to feed the hungry and house the poor.”
“Chairman Godfrey,” Timo sighed, shaking his head slowly in disbelief, “don’t act like we don’t know where you came from. Don’t act like we don’t know about the decades you’ve spent fighting to protect the advantages of your friends at the top.”
“Exactly,” Jack Neal sycophantically jumped in.
“And you can wipe the smirk off your face, too,” Timo fired at him. “No one has forgotten how willingly your man Cole sold out his voters and supported this shark’s attempts to destroy the British health service last year.”
Marian de Clerk cleared her throat. “As I said, Timo, it’s important that we keep to the correct topic. These kinds of political points don’t belong in either of today’s segments.”
“Point taken,” Timo acknowledged. “Sometimes a little background is necessary, that’s all. But I will touch on Voyager, since he mentioned it. Despite my view that certain things could and should have been done differently, it’s important to remember that when we look at Voyager we’re looking decades into the past with the benefit of hindsight. It’s also important to remember that the Golden Records themselves were very inexpensive in relation to the cost of that mission as a whole, which everyone with the slightest interest in space knows has provided us with mountains of priceless data and imagery. So I wholeheartedly disagree with Chairman Godfrey’s comment, and I stand firm in my belief that we should always do the best we can with the resources available to us at the time.”
“Waste of money then, waste of money now,” Godfrey muttered under his breath.
“And there it is again,” Timo said, pointing his finger at Godfrey. “On the broader point of Reciprocity’s cost, I want to stress that my proposals are the polar opposite of the GSC’s research model. By that I mean that rather than allocating public money to companies aiming to develop proprietary technologies, at Fiore Frontiere we will privately fund the research and development of projects which will benefit the public. Secondly, this kind of thing is propaganda, plain and simple. Pre-GSC, I had a lot of friends in the Indian space sector. And whenever they launched or even announced anything, the news reports in the West would unfailingly include a few lines about poverty rates in India; you know, just to remind us of the pecking order. But whenever NASA launched something in Florida, did the European press talk about homelessness rates in the US, which are higher than those in India? Of course not. You see, there’s a powerful agenda working to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately for that status quo’s current beneficiaries, I’m not going to put up with it any longer.”
Godfrey made a show of rolling his eyes at Timo’s reply.
“And very briefly,” de Clerk said, “it would be remiss of me not to at least touch on the social media storm surrounding some of your recent comments, Timo.”
He knew this question had been coming, and Emma’s lines were fresh in his mind. “Well, there was no storm. But I do know what you’re talking about, so I’ll say this once: I have all the time in the world for genuine struggles for the dignity of minority groups of all kinds. What I have no time for is the clickbait media’s shameless tactic of drumming up hysteria and manufacturing outrage where no real offence has been taken, much less intended.”
“And would you like to take this opportunity to apologise?” de Clerk asked in a neutral tone.
Timo made sure to sit up straight and hold his chin high. “No.”
No one was surprised when Jack Neal again jumped to Timo’s defence, just as unwelcomely as the last time. “Personally, I want to applaud you for standing up to the censorious thought police who have tried to derail your Reciprocity initiative,” Jack said. “And that’s one position the Prime Minister definitely does agree with.”
Timo shrugged. “Personally, Jack, I don’t care what you think and I don’t want your support.”
Jack’s expression recoiled slightly at the unexpectedly fierce rebuke, but he glanced at his notes and continued anyway with a pre-written passage he clearly wanted to get across. “Well, uh, since we’ve been talking about the Voyager Golden Records, I think it’s worth pointing out that the massive technological advancements since the 1970s mean that being representative should be infinitely easier today than it was back then, when they did a great job in difficult circumstances. Logistically speaking, it’s much easier now that everything required can be gathered with a click of a mouse rather than an intercontinental flight and a visit to a distant library. But sociologically speaking, it’s now become literally impossible to be sufficiently representative. As Timo has seen, it doesn’t matter what you say, what you mean, or even what you do. It’s more difficult than ever due to the new and overwhelming need for tokenistic inclusion of everyone and everything, no matter the broader relevance or lack thereof. That’s all I want to say on that.”
“Good,” Godfrey chimed in, “because you’re boring us all to tears.”
Timo clenched his teeth to avoid grinning automatically at Godfrey’s put-down. Like every other piece of advice from Emma, this one worked, too. “My own last word on this is that Reciprocity is far from the most important thing we’re working on,” he said, “but I do firmly believe that attempting to capture a snapshot of human civilisation in a message for our extraterrestrial friends is a worthwhile endeavour. And in case I need to make this any clearer than it already is, I won’t allow the project to be hijacked by Jack Neal’s shallow and predictable rhetoric.”
William Godfrey grinned from ear to ear; there was no clenching of teeth at his part of the desk. Then, with undeniably impressive ease, his expression turned suddenly serious. “But moving on,” he said, firmly taking charge of the discussion as Marian de Clerk opted to let things flow. “The Global Space Commission has been criticised in recent days for being too quiet. To that charge, I say this: at the GSC, we devote a great deal of our resources to issues of planetary defence. Just because we don’t hold self-serving press conferences every few days, that doesn’t mean we’re not working tirelessly on threat analysis, on research and design, and on all manner of emergency protocols. An effective public agency is one that does its job well and one that does its job quietly. I understand that for a publicity hound such as Mr Fiore, particularly one who turns up for a serious discussion with the likes of Emma Ford at his side, the concept of taking pride in a job well done with quiet humility may be entirely alien, for want of a better word. But for some of us, our public duty is more important than our public image. And even if we collectively decide that it makes sense to actively send messages into space, why should they be physical messages targeted to a specific destination? Well-spread signals make far more sense.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong about spreading the signals,” Billy Kendrick interjected. His voice resonated through the studio as the other panelists turned to face the giant screen which showed his face. “You’re talking about whispering in the vague direction of every house in a neighbourhood and hoping someone hears you; Timo is talking about knocking down the door of the one house we have reason to believe is occupied.”
“Why one house?” Godfrey retorted. “Yes, we know of one alien race. But for all we know, there could be dozens! The GSC has no official collective position on this, and nor should it on any speculative matters, but my personal belief is that the universe is likely to be teeming with truly Earth-like planets which host complex life.”
The giant screen relayed Billy Kendrick shaking his head. “I know that the ‘scientific elite’ you pretend not to be part of likes to rabbit on about how unspectacular our planet is, Chairman Godfrey, but to them I say this: Earth is an unspectacular ball of rock in the same way that the Amazon rainforest is an unspectacular collection of trees. An almost impossible convergence of favourable conditions allows for the incredible biodiversity within that particular ecosystem, just as it does across our extraordinary planet as a whole. And I think I heard the weakest word in the world in there, too: Earth-like. What does that even mean? A golf ball is pretty damn egg-like from where I’m sitting, but only one of them has an embryo developing inside it. And it doesn’t matter how many egg-like golfballs you find… if you want a bird, you need an egg.”
Jack Neal, surprising some, visibly agreed with Billy. “And let’s not forget that intelligence is rare even on Earth,” he said; a harsh observer may have quipped that this was the first intelligent thing Jack had said all day. “Think about it. Look at the number of species, for one thing, yet only one has ascended to any real level of technological development. And it goes further: within our incredible species, look at the number of civilisations which have risen and fallen throughout history. But how many ever came close to achieving space travel? Chairman Godfrey seems to be falling back on the old Copernican principle of mediocrity, which is no surprise given how many people today view humanity itself as mediocre. I can’t exactly blame them, either, because all of us have been browbeaten from infancy to view humanity as bad. Particularly here in the West, we’ve been shamed since youth with ideologically-driven teachings that our forefathers were somehow uniquely evil; that they were and that we are bad, and that our very existence is something to be ashamed of. As within any worldview built around a concept of original sin, it is therefore perfectly understandable for us to cling to a belief that there is — that there must be — something out there that’s better than us. From there it’s no great leap to expect there to be many things better than us, but I’m with Billy on this one: every instance of life in this universe is a miracle, and to my mind the proven existence of one other intelligent race does not increase the likelihood that there may be a third, much less multiple others.”
“Right is right,” Billy said, apparently less insistent than Timo on distancing himself from Jack. “And for once, the idiot is right.”
Timo didn’t have to hide his grin this time; he was certainly allowed to openly agree with Billy.
“That’s enough of that, Mr Kendrick,” de Clerk admonished him. “Please refrain from the insults.”
Billy held his hands up, so close to his camera that they filled the studio’s giant screen. “My apologies. But if I can shift things along to Kerguelen, I want to make the point directly to Godfrey that—”
“Chairman Godfrey,” he butted in.
“I want to ask Godfrey why no official data regarding the bolide has been made public in the four days since it occurred,” Billy continued, unperturbed by the interruption. “I was one of very few people who saw that meteor’s entry and explosion with my own eyes, and I know that it was a spectacular event worthy of the world’s attention. But we’ve heard nothing official from Buenos Aires — not a peep. Godfrey and his cronies want this story to go away, and I want to know why. What are you hiding?”
Godfrey feigned exasperation. “What do you want me to tell you, Billy? That it was a spaceship disguised as a meteor and that the aliens are currently being interrogated on Kerguelen?”
“Here comes the laughter curtain,” Billy said. “Right on cue. But I’ve got some bad news for you, Godfrey: it didn’t work for Walker on Dan McCarthy and it won’t work for you on this.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Godfrey said. “Listen, Billy… I’m not Richard Walker. And I hate to break this to you, but you’re certainly not Dan McCarthy. You’re a hack and a charlatan who never met a spotlight he didn’t like. I understand that you have books and tours to sell, but you have to understand that I have a planet to keep safe. Your tiresome paranoia and your pathological need to frame every temporary mystery as a deliberate conspiracy are not healthy for anyone. The best scientists in the world have studied and analysed all available data, and among the many smart people I trust very much, the consensus is that the bolide was nothing out of the ordinary and poses no reason for alarm.”
