Second Contact, page 48
part #2 of Not Alone Series
Dan was slightly annoyed to be hearing more looting talk when the opposite had been promised, but fortunately this was the last time the topic was discussed.
Penny Holmes, known to millions for her weekly astronomy show and occasional cameos elsewhere, offered some historical context regarding the public mood around the 1910 approach of Halley’s Comet. Penny didn’t pretend that the cases were equivalent — Halley’s particularly close passage that year was never considered a threat by mainstream astronomers — but she argued that lessons could be learned from the hysteria of the time. “Comet pills, comet insurance and a million other scams are likely to pop up in a bid to separate you from your financial resources,” she told the viewers directly, “so it’s going to pay to stay rational and it’s going to pay to stay vigilant.”
The mention of money saw the retail analyst invited to comment on the breaking news that spending on all major credit cards had been blocked within the last few minutes. Evidently, this was the first she was hearing of it. Her response was that people had to get ready to accept that the situation regarding this absolute credit freeze, along with the continued plummeting of stock prices across the board, was “probably not going to get better any time soon.”
The host continued to direct questions to Penny and the retail analyst in turn. Penny’s next was a request to explain the concept of orbital periodicity and impact threats “in the simplest possible terms.” She rattled off a well-practiced and graphic-assisted explanation:
“Let’s say you walk around a parking lot once an hour, following an identical path. Now let’s say someone else tips a bucket of water from the sky onto the same specific part of that path every fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. It might take a while, but sooner or later… splash.”
Dan didn’t actually consider that to be as good an explanation as Penny thought, but the Blitz News host was happy enough with it.
“And there are some who think large comets like this have passed by extremely close in the relatively recent past,” Penny went on. “It’s not my view, but there are a handful of more-or-less reasonable academics out there who think that perhaps the only reason we don’t have records of these long-period comets in the way we have records for short-period comets like Halley is that when the big boys pass by too close, those records — and their keepers — are eliminated. It’s certainly true that indigenous groups in various parts of the world have ancient legends relating to comets as harbingers of doom in the shape of climate-related catastrophes.”
“Uh, and another thing experts expect is that a decline in long-term thinking will once again lead to a precipitous decrease in things like mortgage applications and an increase in risky behaviours,” the host said, following an earpiece-delivered instruction to shift away from Penny’s crazy talk and get back to some less controversial retail analysis as quickly as possible. “Well, I suppose the news of the credit freeze answers the mortgage question, but what of, say, marriage rates?”
As the analyst began to answer, Emma rolled onto her side and looked up at Dan. “Did you ever want to get married?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘did’?” he replied, turning away from the TV to look at her.
“You know what I meant. It’s just like they’re saying: long-term commitments aren’t really on the table for most people when there’s no guarantee of any long-term future.”
“I guess,” he shrugged. “But whatever ‘most people’ think, the world hasn’t ended yet. So anyway… why do you ask? Do you want to get married?”
Emma chuckled. “Isn’t there supposed to be a ring?”
“I could get one,” Dan replied, so quickly and with such a straight face that Emma was completely lost for words.
She didn’t want to say anything as potentially harsh as ‘I was joking’, just in case he wasn’t. There was hard to read, and then there was Dan McCarthy.
“I reckon all the jewellery stores are going to be closed until the future is a little more clear,” she eventually said, opting for an element of humour. Dan’s laugh, on cue, convinced most of her mind that he had been joking; in the less convinced part, she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted him to be.
On the other side of the basement, Dan’s wired phone suddenly began to ring. This prompted him to dive across the bed and lurch towards it to make sure he got there in time. When he reached it and saw the name of the caller, he paused and turned to Emma. “Uh… it’s Trey.”
“Pick up,” she sighed, rolling out of bed and massaging the area between her eyebrows with her thumbs as she often did to get into a focused mindset for important phone calls. She outstretched her arm to receive the phone and Dan handed it over a few seconds after taking the call.
Trey’s eager voice was already coming through the headset, mid-sentence, when Emma first put it to her ear: “… hear what I’m saying? It’s me, dude. Are you there? Listen, we need to—”
“And this is me,” Emma interrupted. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” Trey parroted, his tone a lot less calm than Emma’s. “Are you serious?”
She chose her words more carefully before replying again: “Okay… specifically, why are you calling?”
“Maybe I should be asking the damn questions, like what the hell is going on?! Did you guys find the plaque? Did they lead Dan to it and then point him to the comet? Is that what this is? And can you just hand over the phone so I can ask him myself?”
As unwelcome as they were, Trey’s questions — and the tone he delivered them in — were only too understandable. “Well, yeah,” Emma said after giving up on the search for a better answer. “We found the plaque and it showed us where to look, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to help us out with this.”
“And they haven’t contacted Dan since the night I was with you? Neither of you have felt any more of those shooting pains in your neck?”
“No. We have tried to communicate with the Messengers — we went to the place they’ve called Dan to before — but no... nothing.”
Trey was quiet for a few seconds, in which time Dan asked for the phone back and Emma gave it to him. “It’s me now,” he said. “Just wait a sec.”
“Okay,” Trey sighed.
Dan covered the phone’s mouthpiece and turned to Emma. “If they were going to come back, they wouldn’t have let things get this bad,” he told her. “Right? So I think we should show people the plaque. Maybe even just knowing that the aliens knew about this before us could tell some genius scientists something useful. I dunno… a shot in the dark has to be better than no shot at all. We’ve given the GSC time to come up with something but no single project jumps out as a workable solution, and this could be a relevant variable.”
After some hesitation, Emma gave a half-nod of authorisation and Dan told Trey of the fledgling plan.
Trey liked the sound of it. “And what about my footage of the craft? Are you going to show that, too? Do you want me to be there, to explain how you have that footage and how it didn’t get out before now?”
“He’s asking if we want him to be there when we show it, and if we’re going to show the footage, too,” Dan relayed to Emma, who was getting increasingly frustrated by the lower-than-normal volume of the inlet speaker in Dan’s wired handset which meant that they couldn’t both listen in at once. She took the phone and replied directly to Trey.
“We’re going to do something,” she said. “When I know exactly what that something is, I’ll tell you. Just try to stay cool about this, okay? Don’t act weird or tell anyone anything. You know something majorly big, but you have to remember that knowledge is power and power is responsibility. We only need to look at Cole to see what happens when the truth comes out the wrong way.”
“Cole’s a piece of shit,” Trey said, venom suddenly crossing his lips. “I would never do anything like that; I’m not talking about going into business for myself here. I know you know that already, but seriously… fuck that guy, and fuck Jack Neal. But what kind of location are you thinking? If it’s online and the media can’t actually see the plaque for themselves, they won’t believe it. Maybe the drive-in? Do you want me to take care of the projector and everything we had last time?”
“The drive-in isn’t exactly the most secure site,” Emma said.
“It was always fine before,” Trey replied. “Besides, we’re talking about Birchwood here. I’m guessing you guys didn’t see a whole lot of rioting last night.”
Dan tapped Emma on the arm and quietly shared an idea as soon as it entered his mind: “What about the old IDA building? You know, where Timo is going to have the Fiore Frontiere HQ. The main entrance is ready and the press room has been refitted. The rest of the building isn’t open for business yet but we could definitely do something in the press room if we wanted to.”
“Definitely not the drive-in,” Emma reaffirmed to Trey while nodding at Dan. “I’m going to look into the logistics of somewhere else. I’ll let you know.”
“Today?” Trey asked.
“I’ll let you know today, yeah. But we only get one chance at this and I need to find a way to frame everything, so we’ll say tomorrow for the actual reveal. Last night was bad but the first night was always going to be the worst, at least until it becomes visible to the naked eye. I know a lot of people won’t be at work or school today, but a lot of people will be and they’ll be back again tomorrow. The world hasn’t ended yet.”
“Keep me in the loop,” Trey said. “And stay strong over there, okay?”
“We’ll give it our best shot,” Emma replied. And with that, she hung up.
C plus 20
10 Downing Street
London, England
Of all the political missteps, of all the political embarrassments, and of all the unsalvageable political situations, there had been none like this.
John Cole had seen a lot and Jack Neal had seen a lot more, but neither had seen an outlook as bleak as this one. Cole knew that he couldn’t reasonably blame Jack for what had happened — it had been his own idea to run with an ‘accidental’ reveal and Jack had openly expressed his own reservations so strongly that Cole had initially agreed to put a pin in it — and this only served to amplify his regret.
At the precise moment Chairman Godfrey expelled the United Kingdom from the GSC, John Cole’s position as Prime Minister became untenable.
That the expulsion came shortly before a series of simultaneous official announcements which disclosed the existence of Comet Conte-Abate made the whole debacle even harder for Cole to take. For while concerned Americans tuned in to hear President Slater and equally concerned Chinese citizens hung on Ding Ziyang’s every word, tens of millions of Britons tuned in to see not their elected leader but his predecessor: Godfrey.
Cole was furious and embarrassed at how things had played out, and the morning’s general public mood did nothing to lift his own.
A new spin on the familiar ColeDog political caricature had already been shared online a record number of times; the cartoon showed Jack Neal lying mauled by his out-of-control attack dog and much of the world flattened as the rabid and slobbering beast rampaged around the globe in pursuit of a giant sausage which hung down from an approaching comet. There wasn’t a particularly deep or incisive meaning behind the sketch, but it covered the main bases.
Another pair of well-known and less family-friendly political caricatures, first seen in a four-page comic strip titled ‘Arse-Cole and Jack-Ass’, were also given a fresh lease of life in the aftermath of Cole’s public embarrassment. In this image, an extremely overweight and unkempt version of Cole sat atop a tired and scrawny donkey with Jack Neal’s face. Cole struck the pose of a deviant flasher, sporting a menacing grin as he held open a long overcoat to reveal rolls of paper with the word “COMET” scrawled in huge letters on every line.
The opinion pages of the morning’s newspapers contained more serious criticisms of Cole’s transparent and reckless politicking. Some commenters understood why the comet’s approach had been kept under wraps, while others harboured a degree of anger at the world’s governments for keeping the truth hidden. But even from those angry at the secrecy, Cole received not so much as a word of praise or thanks; after all, rather than bravely break rank to deliver a message he felt the citizens of Earth deserved to hear, he had presented the revelation as an accident.
The newspapers’ front pages, meanwhile, both reflected and perpetuated the main reaction of terror among the general population. These front pages were plastered with understandably alarmist headlines and vivid artists’ impressions of catastrophic impacts and some of the expected results; mocked-up tsunamis lent themselves particularly well to this kind of thing.
In political circles, the calls for Cole to resign were already deafening, with both rivals and colleagues insisting that he should save himself the embarrassment of a vote of no confidence and go now. This was no soon-to-pass social media firestorm like the kind Cole was used to riding out. The scathing words of his former allies were far from hollow, as evidenced by the fact that several of his ministers had already resigned and that all of the obvious replacements had already ruled out the prospect of ever joining a cabinet led by Cole; by mid-morning, it was readily apparent that even the most publicity-seeking of career-minded climbers knew that seizing this particular opportunity would do them more harm than good.
Even the longstanding ministers who refused to resign out of principle issued statements and gave interviews to decisively distance themselves from the Prime Minister, who now found himself with no support from any angle. Party donors wanted him out, the party membership wanted him out, the opposition wanted him out, the public wanted him out, and, most painfully, even the handful of colleagues he had considered close allies now wanted him out.
To make matters worse, the blood drones which had embarrassed William Godfrey so much a year earlier had returned to Downing Street overnight and left their mark in the form of a giant red X in the middle of the street.
Cole didn’t care what the X was supposed to mean — that he was a target, that he was finished, or whatever else the idiots were trying to say — and unlike those tasked with keeping him safe he didn’t even particularly care about the alarming breach of Downing Street security. Cole cared only about what such an affront signified: that, like Godfrey’s back then, his position was no longer respected.
Cole had at least avoided the ignominy faced by Jack Neal some twenty minutes before his arrival, when one of several eggs thrown towards him from a distance hit him square in the face as he stepped into a car.
For all the man’s occasional spinelessness, Cole felt that Jack deserved better than that. Partly for that reason and partly because no one else in the world was still bound to his own political hip, he had decided he would go easy on him.
But when Jack arrived, he looked anything but humiliated.
“What the hell are you so happy about?” Cole asked.
Jack lifted his phone from his pocket. “Good news, boss. It’s about Trey Myers.”
Upon hearing this, Cole’s glum demeanour quickly lifted. “Go on…”
“He called Emma,” Jack said, his hand hovering over a play button on the phone’s screen. “I have a full recording of Trey’s side of the conversation, and I think you’re going to want to hear what they were talking about…”
C plus 21
Ford Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
In a huge and expensive coup for Blitz News, Marian de Clerk, the long-term host of Focus 20/20, joined their mid-afternoon team in the studio to take viewers’ calls for the better part of an hour.
Although Tuesday afternoons normally saw some of the lowest ratings of the week, this was anything but a normal Tuesday afternoon; concerned citizens from coast to coast had nowhere else to turn for information but their TV sets, and this audience was as captive as they came.
The primary source of the particularly pronounced mid-afternoon ratings spike, however, was not Marian de Clerk. Rather, it was Dan McCarthy.
Still much loved by the public for his relentless and selfless pursuit of the truth a year earlier, Dan’s views on all manner of topics were courted by media organisations on a regular basis. One analysis of why Dan’s popularity transcended generational bounds like few others’ was that people liked him for different reasons; youth audiences admired him for ‘sticking it to the man’, while older audiences respected the dignified way he had handled things when the man fought back. This analysis wasn’t the most nuanced, but Emma had always thought there was at least some truth behind it.
So when Emma received a call from Blitz News asking if Dan would be willing to share some calming words, both of them were willing to go along with it. Neither were under any illusion that Blitz cared more about calming words than stellar ratings, but the invitation presented an opportunity to organically draw attention to their planned revelation of the fourth plaque without the need to court publicity with the old ‘announcement of a future announcement’ tactic Emma had repeatedly used to maintain and maximise attention during the rocky days after the IDA leak.
Trey’s call earlier in the day had generated much discussion among the whole group, and the idea of publicly revealing the fourth plaque and Trey’s crystal-clear footage of an alien craft flying over Lolo met universal agreement.
Timo, in particular, strongly concurred that it was time to do something to shake things up. Earlier in the morning he had received further updates from GSC insiders as well as his Fiore Frontiere staff who had been present at the summit, all of whom confided that the optimism President Slater tried to get across about the likelihood of suitable defensive measures being developed and launched before it was too late was, quite frankly, not founded in reality. Nothing revolutionary had yet been proposed, and nothing non-revolutionary could do the job.
Penny Holmes, known to millions for her weekly astronomy show and occasional cameos elsewhere, offered some historical context regarding the public mood around the 1910 approach of Halley’s Comet. Penny didn’t pretend that the cases were equivalent — Halley’s particularly close passage that year was never considered a threat by mainstream astronomers — but she argued that lessons could be learned from the hysteria of the time. “Comet pills, comet insurance and a million other scams are likely to pop up in a bid to separate you from your financial resources,” she told the viewers directly, “so it’s going to pay to stay rational and it’s going to pay to stay vigilant.”
The mention of money saw the retail analyst invited to comment on the breaking news that spending on all major credit cards had been blocked within the last few minutes. Evidently, this was the first she was hearing of it. Her response was that people had to get ready to accept that the situation regarding this absolute credit freeze, along with the continued plummeting of stock prices across the board, was “probably not going to get better any time soon.”
The host continued to direct questions to Penny and the retail analyst in turn. Penny’s next was a request to explain the concept of orbital periodicity and impact threats “in the simplest possible terms.” She rattled off a well-practiced and graphic-assisted explanation:
“Let’s say you walk around a parking lot once an hour, following an identical path. Now let’s say someone else tips a bucket of water from the sky onto the same specific part of that path every fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. It might take a while, but sooner or later… splash.”
Dan didn’t actually consider that to be as good an explanation as Penny thought, but the Blitz News host was happy enough with it.
“And there are some who think large comets like this have passed by extremely close in the relatively recent past,” Penny went on. “It’s not my view, but there are a handful of more-or-less reasonable academics out there who think that perhaps the only reason we don’t have records of these long-period comets in the way we have records for short-period comets like Halley is that when the big boys pass by too close, those records — and their keepers — are eliminated. It’s certainly true that indigenous groups in various parts of the world have ancient legends relating to comets as harbingers of doom in the shape of climate-related catastrophes.”
“Uh, and another thing experts expect is that a decline in long-term thinking will once again lead to a precipitous decrease in things like mortgage applications and an increase in risky behaviours,” the host said, following an earpiece-delivered instruction to shift away from Penny’s crazy talk and get back to some less controversial retail analysis as quickly as possible. “Well, I suppose the news of the credit freeze answers the mortgage question, but what of, say, marriage rates?”
As the analyst began to answer, Emma rolled onto her side and looked up at Dan. “Did you ever want to get married?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘did’?” he replied, turning away from the TV to look at her.
“You know what I meant. It’s just like they’re saying: long-term commitments aren’t really on the table for most people when there’s no guarantee of any long-term future.”
“I guess,” he shrugged. “But whatever ‘most people’ think, the world hasn’t ended yet. So anyway… why do you ask? Do you want to get married?”
Emma chuckled. “Isn’t there supposed to be a ring?”
“I could get one,” Dan replied, so quickly and with such a straight face that Emma was completely lost for words.
She didn’t want to say anything as potentially harsh as ‘I was joking’, just in case he wasn’t. There was hard to read, and then there was Dan McCarthy.
“I reckon all the jewellery stores are going to be closed until the future is a little more clear,” she eventually said, opting for an element of humour. Dan’s laugh, on cue, convinced most of her mind that he had been joking; in the less convinced part, she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted him to be.
On the other side of the basement, Dan’s wired phone suddenly began to ring. This prompted him to dive across the bed and lurch towards it to make sure he got there in time. When he reached it and saw the name of the caller, he paused and turned to Emma. “Uh… it’s Trey.”
“Pick up,” she sighed, rolling out of bed and massaging the area between her eyebrows with her thumbs as she often did to get into a focused mindset for important phone calls. She outstretched her arm to receive the phone and Dan handed it over a few seconds after taking the call.
Trey’s eager voice was already coming through the headset, mid-sentence, when Emma first put it to her ear: “… hear what I’m saying? It’s me, dude. Are you there? Listen, we need to—”
“And this is me,” Emma interrupted. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” Trey parroted, his tone a lot less calm than Emma’s. “Are you serious?”
She chose her words more carefully before replying again: “Okay… specifically, why are you calling?”
“Maybe I should be asking the damn questions, like what the hell is going on?! Did you guys find the plaque? Did they lead Dan to it and then point him to the comet? Is that what this is? And can you just hand over the phone so I can ask him myself?”
As unwelcome as they were, Trey’s questions — and the tone he delivered them in — were only too understandable. “Well, yeah,” Emma said after giving up on the search for a better answer. “We found the plaque and it showed us where to look, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to help us out with this.”
“And they haven’t contacted Dan since the night I was with you? Neither of you have felt any more of those shooting pains in your neck?”
“No. We have tried to communicate with the Messengers — we went to the place they’ve called Dan to before — but no... nothing.”
Trey was quiet for a few seconds, in which time Dan asked for the phone back and Emma gave it to him. “It’s me now,” he said. “Just wait a sec.”
“Okay,” Trey sighed.
Dan covered the phone’s mouthpiece and turned to Emma. “If they were going to come back, they wouldn’t have let things get this bad,” he told her. “Right? So I think we should show people the plaque. Maybe even just knowing that the aliens knew about this before us could tell some genius scientists something useful. I dunno… a shot in the dark has to be better than no shot at all. We’ve given the GSC time to come up with something but no single project jumps out as a workable solution, and this could be a relevant variable.”
After some hesitation, Emma gave a half-nod of authorisation and Dan told Trey of the fledgling plan.
Trey liked the sound of it. “And what about my footage of the craft? Are you going to show that, too? Do you want me to be there, to explain how you have that footage and how it didn’t get out before now?”
“He’s asking if we want him to be there when we show it, and if we’re going to show the footage, too,” Dan relayed to Emma, who was getting increasingly frustrated by the lower-than-normal volume of the inlet speaker in Dan’s wired handset which meant that they couldn’t both listen in at once. She took the phone and replied directly to Trey.
“We’re going to do something,” she said. “When I know exactly what that something is, I’ll tell you. Just try to stay cool about this, okay? Don’t act weird or tell anyone anything. You know something majorly big, but you have to remember that knowledge is power and power is responsibility. We only need to look at Cole to see what happens when the truth comes out the wrong way.”
“Cole’s a piece of shit,” Trey said, venom suddenly crossing his lips. “I would never do anything like that; I’m not talking about going into business for myself here. I know you know that already, but seriously… fuck that guy, and fuck Jack Neal. But what kind of location are you thinking? If it’s online and the media can’t actually see the plaque for themselves, they won’t believe it. Maybe the drive-in? Do you want me to take care of the projector and everything we had last time?”
“The drive-in isn’t exactly the most secure site,” Emma said.
“It was always fine before,” Trey replied. “Besides, we’re talking about Birchwood here. I’m guessing you guys didn’t see a whole lot of rioting last night.”
Dan tapped Emma on the arm and quietly shared an idea as soon as it entered his mind: “What about the old IDA building? You know, where Timo is going to have the Fiore Frontiere HQ. The main entrance is ready and the press room has been refitted. The rest of the building isn’t open for business yet but we could definitely do something in the press room if we wanted to.”
“Definitely not the drive-in,” Emma reaffirmed to Trey while nodding at Dan. “I’m going to look into the logistics of somewhere else. I’ll let you know.”
“Today?” Trey asked.
“I’ll let you know today, yeah. But we only get one chance at this and I need to find a way to frame everything, so we’ll say tomorrow for the actual reveal. Last night was bad but the first night was always going to be the worst, at least until it becomes visible to the naked eye. I know a lot of people won’t be at work or school today, but a lot of people will be and they’ll be back again tomorrow. The world hasn’t ended yet.”
“Keep me in the loop,” Trey said. “And stay strong over there, okay?”
“We’ll give it our best shot,” Emma replied. And with that, she hung up.
C plus 20
10 Downing Street
London, England
Of all the political missteps, of all the political embarrassments, and of all the unsalvageable political situations, there had been none like this.
John Cole had seen a lot and Jack Neal had seen a lot more, but neither had seen an outlook as bleak as this one. Cole knew that he couldn’t reasonably blame Jack for what had happened — it had been his own idea to run with an ‘accidental’ reveal and Jack had openly expressed his own reservations so strongly that Cole had initially agreed to put a pin in it — and this only served to amplify his regret.
At the precise moment Chairman Godfrey expelled the United Kingdom from the GSC, John Cole’s position as Prime Minister became untenable.
That the expulsion came shortly before a series of simultaneous official announcements which disclosed the existence of Comet Conte-Abate made the whole debacle even harder for Cole to take. For while concerned Americans tuned in to hear President Slater and equally concerned Chinese citizens hung on Ding Ziyang’s every word, tens of millions of Britons tuned in to see not their elected leader but his predecessor: Godfrey.
Cole was furious and embarrassed at how things had played out, and the morning’s general public mood did nothing to lift his own.
A new spin on the familiar ColeDog political caricature had already been shared online a record number of times; the cartoon showed Jack Neal lying mauled by his out-of-control attack dog and much of the world flattened as the rabid and slobbering beast rampaged around the globe in pursuit of a giant sausage which hung down from an approaching comet. There wasn’t a particularly deep or incisive meaning behind the sketch, but it covered the main bases.
Another pair of well-known and less family-friendly political caricatures, first seen in a four-page comic strip titled ‘Arse-Cole and Jack-Ass’, were also given a fresh lease of life in the aftermath of Cole’s public embarrassment. In this image, an extremely overweight and unkempt version of Cole sat atop a tired and scrawny donkey with Jack Neal’s face. Cole struck the pose of a deviant flasher, sporting a menacing grin as he held open a long overcoat to reveal rolls of paper with the word “COMET” scrawled in huge letters on every line.
The opinion pages of the morning’s newspapers contained more serious criticisms of Cole’s transparent and reckless politicking. Some commenters understood why the comet’s approach had been kept under wraps, while others harboured a degree of anger at the world’s governments for keeping the truth hidden. But even from those angry at the secrecy, Cole received not so much as a word of praise or thanks; after all, rather than bravely break rank to deliver a message he felt the citizens of Earth deserved to hear, he had presented the revelation as an accident.
The newspapers’ front pages, meanwhile, both reflected and perpetuated the main reaction of terror among the general population. These front pages were plastered with understandably alarmist headlines and vivid artists’ impressions of catastrophic impacts and some of the expected results; mocked-up tsunamis lent themselves particularly well to this kind of thing.
In political circles, the calls for Cole to resign were already deafening, with both rivals and colleagues insisting that he should save himself the embarrassment of a vote of no confidence and go now. This was no soon-to-pass social media firestorm like the kind Cole was used to riding out. The scathing words of his former allies were far from hollow, as evidenced by the fact that several of his ministers had already resigned and that all of the obvious replacements had already ruled out the prospect of ever joining a cabinet led by Cole; by mid-morning, it was readily apparent that even the most publicity-seeking of career-minded climbers knew that seizing this particular opportunity would do them more harm than good.
Even the longstanding ministers who refused to resign out of principle issued statements and gave interviews to decisively distance themselves from the Prime Minister, who now found himself with no support from any angle. Party donors wanted him out, the party membership wanted him out, the opposition wanted him out, the public wanted him out, and, most painfully, even the handful of colleagues he had considered close allies now wanted him out.
To make matters worse, the blood drones which had embarrassed William Godfrey so much a year earlier had returned to Downing Street overnight and left their mark in the form of a giant red X in the middle of the street.
Cole didn’t care what the X was supposed to mean — that he was a target, that he was finished, or whatever else the idiots were trying to say — and unlike those tasked with keeping him safe he didn’t even particularly care about the alarming breach of Downing Street security. Cole cared only about what such an affront signified: that, like Godfrey’s back then, his position was no longer respected.
Cole had at least avoided the ignominy faced by Jack Neal some twenty minutes before his arrival, when one of several eggs thrown towards him from a distance hit him square in the face as he stepped into a car.
For all the man’s occasional spinelessness, Cole felt that Jack deserved better than that. Partly for that reason and partly because no one else in the world was still bound to his own political hip, he had decided he would go easy on him.
But when Jack arrived, he looked anything but humiliated.
“What the hell are you so happy about?” Cole asked.
Jack lifted his phone from his pocket. “Good news, boss. It’s about Trey Myers.”
Upon hearing this, Cole’s glum demeanour quickly lifted. “Go on…”
“He called Emma,” Jack said, his hand hovering over a play button on the phone’s screen. “I have a full recording of Trey’s side of the conversation, and I think you’re going to want to hear what they were talking about…”
C plus 21
Ford Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
In a huge and expensive coup for Blitz News, Marian de Clerk, the long-term host of Focus 20/20, joined their mid-afternoon team in the studio to take viewers’ calls for the better part of an hour.
Although Tuesday afternoons normally saw some of the lowest ratings of the week, this was anything but a normal Tuesday afternoon; concerned citizens from coast to coast had nowhere else to turn for information but their TV sets, and this audience was as captive as they came.
The primary source of the particularly pronounced mid-afternoon ratings spike, however, was not Marian de Clerk. Rather, it was Dan McCarthy.
Still much loved by the public for his relentless and selfless pursuit of the truth a year earlier, Dan’s views on all manner of topics were courted by media organisations on a regular basis. One analysis of why Dan’s popularity transcended generational bounds like few others’ was that people liked him for different reasons; youth audiences admired him for ‘sticking it to the man’, while older audiences respected the dignified way he had handled things when the man fought back. This analysis wasn’t the most nuanced, but Emma had always thought there was at least some truth behind it.
So when Emma received a call from Blitz News asking if Dan would be willing to share some calming words, both of them were willing to go along with it. Neither were under any illusion that Blitz cared more about calming words than stellar ratings, but the invitation presented an opportunity to organically draw attention to their planned revelation of the fourth plaque without the need to court publicity with the old ‘announcement of a future announcement’ tactic Emma had repeatedly used to maintain and maximise attention during the rocky days after the IDA leak.
Trey’s call earlier in the day had generated much discussion among the whole group, and the idea of publicly revealing the fourth plaque and Trey’s crystal-clear footage of an alien craft flying over Lolo met universal agreement.
Timo, in particular, strongly concurred that it was time to do something to shake things up. Earlier in the morning he had received further updates from GSC insiders as well as his Fiore Frontiere staff who had been present at the summit, all of whom confided that the optimism President Slater tried to get across about the likelihood of suitable defensive measures being developed and launched before it was too late was, quite frankly, not founded in reality. Nothing revolutionary had yet been proposed, and nothing non-revolutionary could do the job.
