“WELCOME LISTENERS, I AM Peter Scott, and this is the Uncovering Science Podcast. Our special guest in the studio today is a nuclear physicist who spent time in the hallowed halls of academia here in Boston. We didn’t pre-announce his name because anonymity was a condition of speaking on the show. The topic is very relevant to what’s been on the news these last few weeks – that being the global reaction to the obelisk, its meaning, and how we might protect ourselves.”

Ears held up his laptop to show Peter the screen, and he mouthed “one hundred seven thousand listeners.”

At that large number, Molli grabbed her laptop and shook her head in disbelief. Peter’s jaw dropped open, and he paused for an uncomfortable moment.

“Oh, my God!” he began. “Well, today we’ll analyze the poison pill alternative nominally mentioned in the media. Because I prefer to be on a first name basis with our guests, he’s agreed to let me call him Paul. In fact, our internal code name for him has been Poison Paul, but I don’t see anything about him too volatile or deadly for us not to listen. Let’s get to it right after this message.”

Molli queued the ad and spoke before Peter could say anything. “Thirty seconds.” She glanced at Ears. “What the hell, buddy? Those numbers can’t be right, not unless the Reverend’s flock is still visiting.”

Ears smiled. “I told you guys I’d accelerate the list-building and marketing. Contacted every underground geedee group I could find. This is not your run-of-the-mill science podcast anymore, kids. It’s a contender.”

“3-2-1,” Molli uttered to get them on track.

“My friend Ears, who has spoken on some of our shows before, just told me we are quadruple the number of listeners from last week, so we welcome our many first-timers. I’m not sure if it’s due to my vivacious personality or our interesting guests.”

“I’d place a Vegas bet on the guests,” Molli interjected.

Peter laughed, “No doubt, and speaking of that, let’s get started with Paul. Oh, he requested to disguise his voice, and we’re live which might make it sound metallic at times. Paul, I won’t give you much of an introduction, given the circumstances, but can you tell us how long you’ve been in and around nuclear physics in a professional sense?”

Paul rubbed his white beard which matched his shoulder-length white hair. “Forty-plus.”

“For the audience, you should interpret that as years and not days. Were you in an official role with our federal government and nuclear agencies?”

“Yes,” he answered, “both employed directly and as a contractor for many years.”

“Weapons systems?”

“Yes, almost exclusively.”

“Okay, great.” Peter was concerned Paul suffered microphone-shyness so he lobbed an open-ended question to elicit a longer reply.

“What’s your view on using nuclear weapons, either tactical, battlefield, or global, in response to a possible alien invasion, should that occur in the next, who knows, ten or ten thousand years?” he quipped.

Paul wrapped his hands atop his plump belly, covered only by an aging green Hawaiian shirt.

“Thought you’d never ask. Mind if I just start talking?”

“Yes, yes,” Peter replied. “And for the listeners, please explain the poison pill analogy in this context.”

“Sure, Peter. For those who are not inclined to the corporate world, a poison pill is a term used by a company to prevent a hostile takeover. A business might allow existing shareowners to buy many more shares at a discount in the event a hostile shareowner takes a run at buying enough shares to assume control. That effectively poisons any such transaction by diluting the value of all shares, to the detriment of all. In other words, if the hostile decides to proceed, it dies along with that which it attacked. It’s a fitting analogy to what I’m discussing.”

“Please tell us how it applies to what you’re proposing,” Peter requested.

“Put succinctly, we can use a variety of nuclear devices to ensure no alien would consider annihilating humanity. That may be a shock to some, but I doubt it since the media has begun covering various governmental proposals like this.”

Peter raised his hand. “Let me stop you before we get too far. If we were to nuke the world to deter attacking space marauders, aren’t we effectively killing two birds with one stone? I mean if one bird is the marauders, and the other bird is us?”

“Not quite, Peter. We could make our plans and capabilities well-known to any potential visitors and communicate in a way that any sentient aliens would understand. Look, I’m not personally elated we’ve been pushing radio waves through the atmosphere and into space for well over a hundred years via television. Similarly, I’m not pleased humans live above ground level for any fly-by robotic camera alien probe or any decent telescope to see. And I’m not thrilled we emitted very visible, complex hydrocarbons into the air to signal the existence of not-so-intelligent, intelligent life. My point is this – we have been shining a glaring strobe light on Earth like it was a 1970’s disco ball, screaming, ‘Come on down, Johnnie. Let’s dance.’ We may never discover if that stupidity was directly correlated with the arrival of the obelisk. However, the fact that we now are painfully aware of unpleasant alien life means we need a simple and effective poison pill solution for the planet.”

Peter wanted to give more grounding to the concept. “Back to the corporate world, Paul. Do these poison pills work, or do the corporate raiders find a way to subvert them?”

“I’m no legal or business expert, but poison pills have been used in business for a long time, which speaks to their effectiveness.”

“Then assume we include this into our strategy. How does it play out?”

“I can’t expose the secrets I know, as to do so places me in personal jeopardy or behind bars trading smokes for favors. I can say this, and much of what I’m stating is easily corroborated with a few search terms. Despite our longstanding attempts at arms reductions, we have enough fissile material in various countries, much less in private arsenals that people don’t discuss, to fry the Earth’s surface again and again, making it a very nasty terminus for a few thousand years. Thankfully, most of that material remains in reasonably sensible hands, so our species has not yet toasted this lovely rock. The bulk of that arsenal is sitting on missile warheads pointed at major metros like Boston, Beijing, Bombay, and other cities that don’t start with that letter. Yet this material is not poison pillable enough, to use a term. In other words, it’s not intended to deter a celestial marauder and can’t be easily converted to do so.”

“In addition,” Molli interjected, “I assume most countries are not willing to re-align their massive missile stockpiles away from their original targets.”

“Exactly, Molli,” he confirmed. “The reasons for pointing those arrows at their current targets has not changed as a result of the obelisk.

“Then what are you suggesting?”

“I’m proposing the most effective way to fend them off is to build enough tactical nukes to place them everywhere, and I mean everywhere. This mitigates the possibility that marauders could inhibit the detonation of missiles in the ground or air, should we decide to go that route. If you had such poison pill weapons ready to explode every hundred square miles or so, you could guarantee an extended global annihilation and planetary poisoning – if it came to that.”

“But what if these nasty little green guys use systems that suspend electrical power?” Peter queried. “Any signal to attack might be blunted, and any attempt to arm the weapons might be useless.”

Paul smiled confidently. “I may not be your first nuclear weapons expert on the show, Peter, but let me tell you. Those two nukes about the size of your desk that wasted cities and lives in Japan a hundred years ago required very little electricity. We could easily adapt fusing systems to either run off batteries or be engaged manually, albeit with considerable danger to the person with his hands in the till. By that time, however, hands anywhere near the little beasts wouldn’t matter much.”

“Any concerns for how to control the proliferation of these weapons? I can’t imagine placing these devices every hundred square miles. You’d need an army the size of China and India to guard them.”

“Perhaps so. But having one very flexible plan may be worth the cost of doing just that. We could be facing the choice of either using this option or praying to that effulgent and often silent being in heaven for help. My preference is the former as I’m not that effective at communicating effulgently.”

There was another awkward silence. “What of Hatfields and McCoys?” Peter wondered.

Paul was confused. “Not sure I understand.”

“A parallel. Many listeners might know of the famous Hatfield and McCoys feud from the late 1800s. I can’t imagine all these little Hatfield countries who border the McCoy countries. They hate each other with a passion. How do you convince them not to use their allotment of a thousand tactical nukes to teach their McCoy neighbors a lesson in manners?”

Paul pulled his shirtsleeves up and smiled. “You got it right, Peter. The United Nations is getting deep into similar questions. They are asking if we are mature enough as a race, as a sentient species on the planet, to move past those squabbles and consider the larger, apocalyptic threat.”

“I don’t think so,” Peter confessed, peering at Molli for input.

“Don’t look at me,” Molli shrugged. “I prefer to be hopeful at humankind’s ability to do the right thing, since hope is the only thing we have in our favor. I’ll not make any bets we’ll get there, but hope springs eternal, right?”

Peter and Paul both laughed uncomfortably.

Paul continued. “Funny you mentioned betting. The strength in this plan is its certainty of outcome, although it can be risky for relatively large numbers of people. What if a nation got too tactical with their cross-border animosities and killed twenty million in a flash? That’s far less than nine billion of us getting fried by unwanted visitors. Granted, it’s a bet that some could die in unfortunate skirmishes, but humanity overall survives. Maybe people will begin to finally play friendly with each other, given their renewed perspectives on who and what is the real threat. Lots of adversaries in the past have piggybacked on each other to do their mutual bidding against a more powerful adversary.”

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“How real is this? How active are discussions?” Peter questioned.

“Again, I can’t tell you specifics. I will say what little you see leaked on the media has ample truth. This plan I’m suggesting was on a think tank’s drawing board long before the obelisk arrived, and you can assume that if I’m discussing it, there are a gaggle of others in every other country drawing out similar plans. Heaven knows, large-scale production might be under way as we speak. I’ll leave it at that and better exit before those government-types lead me out of here in radium-laced foot shackles.”

They thanked Poison Paul for this visit, and he abruptly left.

“One hundred fifty-nine thousand and change,” Ears exclaimed. “Unfolding like a butterfly from the cocoon. Oh, damn, and our friend is back online.”

Peter rubbed his chin. “It says: ‘Not one more, or we demolish your door,’” he grumbled. “Jesus, I am barely ready to get the replacement installed.”

“What another lovely piece it is. How nice. Our crazy is a poet,” Molli added.

Ears looked up at the other two who were still reading through the show emails. “We should get the Cambridge cops on this again.”

Molli’s fingers nervously tapped her red binder.

“I’ll call my friend on the force,” she declared. “Kids, I don’t have to tell you that the world is a far scarier place now than it was two weeks ago, pre-obelisk. Not that it was a gem before, but you see the news with ugly riots occurring, not only in developing countries. In fact, you could say the bulk of kick-ass craziness is happening in our own back yards, even here in Cambridge. One crazy, or whatever the number we’re facing, is just another of millions rummaging around the hornet’s nest looking for trouble. They think they’re entitled to harm others because their shitty little social networks tell them they are so entitled. We might want to consider other forms of protection, or at least prevention.”

“Speaking of hornets, do you guys hear that buzzing?” Peter picked up his phone. “My phone is getting a chain text that keeps repeating the same message as the emails. Not sure where this bastard’s getting the telephone numbers, but he’s spoofing the system.”

“Got to go,” Ears said. “Geedee comms are red-flagged, and various networks are having trouble with the high volume of traffic. I understand that even the nation’s texting system was down for a few hours due to overloads. Convoluted times call for calm minds. What was the old British sign they installed everywhere during the war? ‘Keep Calm and Carry On?’ That’s what we need to do.”

They said goodbye to Ears, and Molli began to text her friend, the police officer. Suddenly, Ears tore back into the house.

“Peter, Molli, come outside.”

“What is it this time?” Peter moaned as he and Molli followed Ears out the front door.

The four tires on Peter’s car were slashed along the tread walls. “Crap!” he lamented, “And I just bought those tires.”

Molli’s instincts kicked in, and she quickly checked around the periphery for any signs of activity. “Maybe someone saw it. I’ll get an officer over here, again.”

“Do you see ‘The Waening’ scratched in soap?” Peter pointed to the car’s front window. “Idiots. They can’t even spell the word ‘warning’ correctly. This is the work of some kid who didn’t pay attention in third grade. Those were great treads, too.”

Ears tugged on Peter’s shirt. “Odd I didn’t hear them. It could be the fan noise from the laptops obscured things, but I should have caught the hissing air. Buddy, I’ll say it again – you need weaponry. Somebody doesn’t like you or us or the podcast.”

Peter shook his head with disgust. He was normally lighthearted, but the two events in a few days’ time was making him uncomfortable.

“I’m worried, too,” he whispered to Ears since Molli was nearby talking on the phone, “and getting the heebee geebies. This doesn’t smell right. We may need to take our podcasts on the road, assuming I get my tires fixed. And garage.”

“What do you mean?” Ears questioned.

“I mean we may need to go clean. No cellphones, at least not powered. I’ll disconnect the antenna in my car. No tollways. Stay away from video cameras, and even tinker with the plates if needed. Nobody should know where we are when we do these next ones. With cellphones, I’ve seen too many times where the carrier comms systems have been hacked. Consider those apps on your phone that are location-dependent.”

“How do we bring the mixer and mics with us?”

“We go old style. I’ll use the voice recorder with a portable mic, not even Bluetooth, and no networkable tech beyond the playout and streaming of the session. We’ll go where our guests are, not vice versa. Nice to get out, anyhow. We don’t want a car bomb going off outside the garage while we’re on air. With the unpredictable reactions to this alien fear and paranoia, we can’t take the chance. I need to decouple my life from the podcast until these waening dudes take a knee or exit the game. I don’t want the final exit to be ours involuntarily.”

* * *

Two days later, Peter was again riding his bike along the path down Mass Avenue to Harvard Square.

“Hey Dirksen, how goes it?” Peter panted as he dismounted, finding his varint friend selling newspapers outside the coffee shop.

“The Waening,” he grinned, handing Peter a copy.

“The Waening? What’s that?”

“This news story from the paper where they spelled the word wrong.”

Dirksen’s grubby fingers pointed to the article.

Peter glanced at the varint-sponsored rag. The headline read, ‘Obelisk found in Saskatchewan – the Waening from an Alien Race?’

“That’s odd.”

“What’s odd?” Dirksen wondered, weakly holding out his palm to get paid.

Peter fumbled for his wallet. “I’ve seen this word recently. On my car window after someone trashed my tires. It must be coincidental.”

“Hmm. As a warning, it’s old news by now. You know, they don’t hire the brightest stars at this rag. They can’t even use a spellcheck. Hey, I sell the things for spare change, and it’s better than panhandling, right? A job.”

“Yep,” Peter replied, then he shuffled into the coffee shop while reviewing the cover story.

“Ouch!” a woman shouted. “That’s my foot!”

“Oh, Christ!” he exclaimed, jumping back. He realized his preoccupation with the paper’s headline made him a wrecking ball in the shop.

The woman pushed her oak chair away from the table, making a loud screech against the floor. She elevated her pained foot and placed it across her knee.

“Double ouch. Right on the bridge,” she winced.

Peter was red-faced as a dozen other patrons watched him stumble through his words.

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I just bought this paper and was enmeshed in an article. Didn’t see you.”

“I’ll say that.”

She pulled the pink-rimmed augment glasses, or auggies, from her face, revealing brilliant blue, effervescent eyes. Peter instantly noticed her unblemished, tanned skin and pleasant face with two large dimples. He also caught the telltale outline of small chips embedded beneath the skin at each temple.

“Don’t stare,” she insisted. “I’m not total varint, or not much of one. I was consuming feeds also, so it could be I wasn’t watching. Wish I had something for this foot, though, since I’m in a bike race tomorrow.”

Peter dropped his paper on the table. “Let me grab some ice. Okay? It’ll reduce the swelling.”

“All right,” she conceded, putting her auggies back on for a magnified view of the bruise.

Peter ran to the front of the coffee line then hurried back with ice wrapped in a towel. He pulled a chair and sat directly across from her.

“Here, put your foot on my chair, and I’ll wrap it gently. Tell me if I apply too much pressure. I did this myself once before a race.”

“You stepped on your own foot?”

He chuckled. “Not exactly. A car ran over it in the grass, thankfully, or I’d be limping everywhere. No breaks, just pain.”

“I got you on the pain, Peter,” she said.

He looked down at his chest to see if his name was imprinted on his shirt. “How’d you know?”

She tapped her auggies with her finger. “Captured your image and asked the system to do facial rec.”

“Oh, I thought you might be prescient.”

Peter had become accustomed to being recognized instantly by chipper varints tied to the net. With instantaneous precision, a chipper could issue a command from the brain to her subcutaneous embedded device and on to the auggies. These were typically linked to Wi-Fi and the Internet where online images and background information could be queried.

“Alright if I hit a few pressure points to mitigate the pain and swelling?” he inquired.

She nodded. “Sure. Who trained you in this technique? Is this your usual come-on to women? You crush their foot then offer solace via oriental massage?”

He laughed again. “A friend of mine is a long-time martial artist. I do this on my own feet.”

She tapped her auggies. “Oh. I see pictures of you and her together. You both run that science podcast. I recently caught wind of it, in fact, since news feeds were buzzing when you did the interview with that nukes guy, Poison Paul. Sorry, I didn’t listen.”

“It was an interesting show, and our stats picked way up. Very surprising numbers. Must be related to the obelisk.”

He pointed at the vidscreen. “Nonstop news about reactions, and we have more.”

“More of what?”

Peter stopped pressing the underside of her foot for a moment. “More like Poison Paul lined up for our podcast. A gene drive expert, a bioethicist, and one guy wanting to call out to friendly aliens. You name it, we have it in queue. You may not be into that stuff.”

She lowered her auggies to the edge of her nose, raised her eyebrows, and stared at her foot. The towel and ice had fallen to the floor.

“You stopped,” she observed.

“Apologies. Any better?” Peter asked, resuming the foot rub.

“Barely. Keep going and, by the way, the info I see on this foot massage theory says you need to do both feet to avoid imbalances of chi.”

She grinned and placed her other foot on Peter’s chair, uncomfortably near his crotch.

He sat straight up, pressing the back of the chair.

“Got it!” he squeaked. “We don’t want any imbalances. Hey, you know my name, so what’s yours?”

“Jennifer,” she revealed. “Now that we’re forever connected to each other, would you consider putting a varint on your show?”

Peter extended his lower lip to ponder her question. “We may have one or two lined up. I can’t recall.”

“A chipper aug-varint?”

“I don’t believe my other partner in crime has determined that yet.”

“Molli? The girl in the photos?” she inquired.

He was always amazed at how quickly augmenter varints could access, analyze, and decipher their data.

“No, not her – she’s essentially the sound engineer, and someone else is lining-up our guests.”

“Ears?” she asked.

Peter shook his head and laughed. “You’re too fast for me, Jennifer. Yes.”

“I know him!” she exclaimed, removing her auggies for a moment. “I mean, not personally, but he’s connected to people in the varint community, and I’ve seen him at various social functions and parties. Seems very shy.”

“Great. Yeah, we’ve known each other for a while, and he’s helping us locate experts for our expanded format in this series.”

“You need to invite an aug-varint.” She bent forward and slapped him on the knee. “Like me. I insist. Minor recompense for the damage, don’t you think?”

He stopped rubbing her damaged foot to ask, “What would I interview you about?”

“Keep going,” she demanded. “Gee, I hope my feet don’t smell.”

Peter stuck his tongue out in false disgust, and she continued with a wide smile.

“This news is all too serious. We’ll either discover it’s a hoax or the aliens are so far out in space, they’ll never get here. You’ll need a lighter touch between your heavier interviews. Put me on to discuss life as a chipper, as an auggie varint. Ask me questions about how my friends and I are processing the news. It’s a nice call out to the non-varints that we’re not that odd or that different and are in touch with things globally. A good show, don’t you agree?”

His hands were getting fatigued. He liked her, and she didn’t focus on the obvious negatives of his clumsiness or her injured foot. She was pleasant to speak with and clearly adept at using her auggies.

“Molli will perceive I invited her because of her looks,” he thought, “but we do have heavies lined up, and getting to something more relevant and human might be a nice break.”

“Well, don’t you?” she queried a second time.

“It’s an interesting idea, and you might be right.”

“Peter, you’ll find that augs are always right.”

She sat up straight and pulled her feet away. “Uh-oh. Your car is on fire.”

“What?” he cried.

“Fire department. A report of a car on fire in your driveway, at least that’s what the feed says.”

Peter’s face paled. “I’ll finish rebalancing your other foot when we do your interview.”

He stood up in a daze. “Got to go, and thanks for telling me. Nice to meet you.”

“I just emailed you per your website’s contact info. Sorry about the car – must be karma for the foot.”

Peter didn’t catch her last few words, and he was out the door racing home to determine what happened.

Ears was present when he arrived.

“I was in the studio when I heard the pop. Lucky for you, it’s a newer model since the old lithium-hybrid battery types can create stellar fireworks.”

Peter turned to scan the neighborhood. “Did you see or hear anyone?”

“Not even,” he stated. “But I had media overload on high, as much as I could stand.”

Peter grabbed the policeman who was directing neighborhood traffic.

“Officer, this is my car and my house. Did they state the cause?”

“Talk to the chief over there, but he says it’s a flammable substance. Acetone or similar.”

He turned to Ears and put his arm around him as they watched the firemen quench the flames.

“Crap. Those were my new replacement tires as of yesterday. Someone is after us, God knows why. Did I hang-up on them? Piss them off in some other way? I’m no longer feeling safe in my own house.”

“I can put you up at my place for now,” Ears consoled him. “We’re already going incognito on the interviews. After this compelling warning, we’ll have to be more careful and keep our eyes and ears peeled.”

“Indeed. I’m out one car, and it looks like rentals for me until I get reimbursed by insurance. That may be a good thing since rentals are not as traceable. I can trade them off every few days to keep these menacing deviants at arm’s length.”

“Good idea,” Ears agreed as they approached the fire marshal, “but gut tells me this is more than just a few of them."