The First American Symposium on the Fate of the World (later dubbed the “the Conclave” by the press, or what remained of it) was held in a giant underground facility beneath downtown Washington D.C.
It was, as to be expected, an ad hoc affair.
Most people of significant influence and power in the world were there or sent delegates. This is not to say that it resembled a G8 or G20 meeting. Politicians were largely absent. This was serious business. It was a place for puppeteers, not puppets. Invited were the best-of-the-best: military, science, finance, tech, intelligence, civil service, banking.
When Dr. Altmayer arrived, the auditorium was still filling up with people.
Security was, in some sense, surprisingly lax, but that was due to the speed with which the meeting had been organized and with which it must be conducted, and because there was really no one to keep out. This time—for the first time in history—there were no enemies, internal or external, to exclude. Infiltration by foreign agents did not particularly matter. The threat faced was existential for the entire human species, maybe for all species on Earth, so international and regional squabbles paled in comparison.
Walking into the auditorium, Dr. Altmayer recognized many of the faces he saw, men and women with whom he had worked before or of whom at least he had heard. He noted that in their desperation the organizers had cast their net exceedingly wide. Among the assembled were some of the black sheep of the world’s elite, thinkers and researchers who, while undoubtedly brilliant, had, to put it mildly, gone off the deep end according to most of their peers (or former peers.) Altmayer himself identified Havelock Lee, the British-Chinese “looney” who had developed “an alternative theory” to consciousness; Sally Kapoor, the leading proponent of military-purpose insect training/hacking; and Masoud Yektapanah, expat Iranian (and former imam) who was perhaps the blackest sheep of all, having spent the last twenty years attempting to develop time travel.
Of course, outnumbering these by far were the more respected members of the world’s true global leadership. Military commanders, industrialists, business tycoons, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, heads of intelligence agencies (the ones you have heard of and the ones you have not), astronomers, theoretical and applied physicists, and so on and so forth, all milling together, ingesting coffee and other stimulants and trying to find a place to sit before the proceedings began in earnest.
In fact, Dr. Altmayer knew so many of the attendees that it was the few he didn’t know who most caught his interest; and most of all a thin, bespeckled, raven-haired woman leaning against the auditorium’s far wall. Not only did he not recognize her, but she looked distinctly out of place. So, naturally, that was where Dr. Altmayer, a man to whom every unknown was a puzzle to be solved, headed.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening,” the raven-haired woman replied. She had a Slavic accent.
Dr. Altmayer introduced himself.
“I know who you are, Doctor,” said the woman.
Dr. Altmayer waited for the woman to introduce herself in return, which would have been the proper thing to do, but perhaps thirty seconds passed and the woman said nothing, so, “Forgive my ignorance, yet I am afraid I do not know who you are,” said Dr. Altmayer.
“True,” she said.
Then she bid him goodbye and moved to another part of the auditorium wall to lean against.
Dr. Altmayer racked his brain, trying to place her face somewhere, anywhere; but he was unsuccessful. The mystery gnawed at him even as another part of his brain prepped for the presentation he would be giving later tonight (or tomorrow morning, depending on how things went,) for although he was well known in the scientific, space and science communities, Dr. Altmayer had spent the last decade of his life keeping a large secret—a very large secret—even from those closest to him. This symposium would be the setting for his divulging of it, hopefully for the benefit of humankind.
Soon the auditorium was full, filled with voices, conversations.
Then, at the stroke of 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, a gong sounded and a man with cropped hair and wearing a pristine military uniform walked up to the podium. “Well, only got an hour of daylight left, better get started,” he said, a few people picking up on the reference. “Ladies and gentlemen, Is there anybody out there? Out there in space: to which the answer, we know this evening to be a resounding and terrifying Yes; and out there in this very auditorium, anybody—or anybodies—who will help us meet the novel threat that is at this very moment hurtling towards us. Fate, we may call it. Is there anybody out there who will help us develop a plan for meeting and defeating Fate? Is there anybody out there who will become, for lack of a better term, a hero?”
After this apparently dramatic introduction (no one stood up and said, “Yes!”) the First American Symposium on the Fate of the World turned to the nitty-gritty.
Discussed first were the known particulars about the three objects heading for Earth, such as when and where they were expected to make planetfall and what was expected to happen in the immediate aftermath.
Next up were the space lizards that Clive and Ray (and the farmers Ray and Dr. Altmayer had overheard in the diner this morning) and countless other people all around the world had encountered in the recent past. What were they? Where did they come from? When did they arrive on Earth, and how?
“There is some question of their drinking blood,” someone said.
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“Yes, I have heard that as well.”
“Not all reports conclude there was blood drinking. In fact, some of the reports which you claim do reference blood drinking in fact mention only blood draining. It is speculation to say that because a victim, human or otherwise, is drained of blood, the creature or creatures which caused the injury leading to blood loss actually drank such blood.”
“Excuse me, but, if I may—I have a theory.” Speaking was Ellis Martens, an expert on genetics. “I propose we consider the possibility of blood, and by that I mean genetic, collection. If, as I believe most of us agree, the so-called creatures on the ground are connected to the so-called objects in space and whatever may be inside them, I believe it prudent to act on the assumption that what is happening planetside is the collection of DNA for future analysis. To put it more practically, I believe we should plan our response to impact on the basis that whatever is in those space objects will know everything, biologically speaking, about us within a few hours of planetfall.”
This caused a commotion and an agreement.
“I have examined one of these creatures.” The auditorium fell quiet. Dr. Roberta Owl, a zoologist, continued: “Just earlier today, so please take what I say with the proverbial grain of salt, but I managed to get my hands on a specimen, a dead specimen, and after a preliminary analysis I cannot agree with the majority who believe the creatures originated somewhere beyond Earth. Although the creatures do not resemble any currently existing species on Earth, my initial conclusion is that they did in fact evolve on Earth—at least to a degree. They are therefore not truly alien.” She paused. “Ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of sounding like a mad woman, I conclude that what the creatures resemble most is dinosaurs.”
“Dinosaurs!?”
“That's preposterous.”
“No more preposterous than any other remotely plausible alternative.”
“Speculation!”
“Plausibility needs reorientation.”
“Friends, everything about this situation is speculation!”
“We simply lack the data.”
“Crackpots—the whole bloody lot of you. Dinosaurs? Damned fools.”
“Order! Order, please. Ms. Owl, go on.”
“I've not much more to say. Not yet. I realize how it sounds, but it's where my brief analysis has led me. I wanted to share,” said Roberta Owl.
Following this was a discussion about where Earth’s defenses should be focused. On one hand, there was the notion that national interests no longer existed and that the only interest was human interest, and therefore the places to be protected were the places with the most humans.
“If you suggest sending the U.S. military to protect China, India and Japan, you’re off your goddamn rocker. Even the logistics are impossible, and the American people won’t stand for it. To say nothing of our fine servicemen-and-women.”
“We all know ‘the American people’ will stand, or not stand, for whatever we tell them to.” (That was the head of the CIA.)
“What about Mexico, Brazil?”
“If Mexico and Brazil want defending, they should have developed their own defense capabilities. Simple as that.”
“I posit that the mindset of ‘us and them’ is obsolete.”
“Fortress America!”
“And what? Let's say America stands but everything around it falls, for how long do you think America will keep standing—and standing for what? We stand or fall together.”
(There was no resolution, and after a while Dr. Altmayer admitted to himself that he had stopped listening to the details of what was being said. Such political and foreign policy squabbles ultimately did not interest him. Important though they might be, it was up to other brains to resolve them.)
Finally, it was his time to speak. “And now, to talk about—well, I don’t actually know what he’ll talk about, Dr. Altmayer from the Central Space Agency,” said the speaker.
Dr. Altmayer usually didn’t mind speaking in front of a crowd, but walking up to the podium on this early morning made him nervous. He felt himself sweating. He still had not decided what precisely he wished to say. But when he was on the stage, the lights and eyes all facing him, he solemnly wiped his brow with a handkerchief and began:
“My friends, what I am about to communicate to you—I expect to hear you jeer and whistle it. Like many of you, I myself am not immune to the great tidal waves of emotion which great events make us feel. Mythology and tales of great men and great deeds have their place. And their historical origins. What is historical was once a present. Military leaders, like football managers, imbue for a reason their men with a sense of inevitable victory. Yet, at my core, I am a scientist, a realist. I understand planning to mean planning for all possibilities, and one possibility of what faces us is, unfortunately, the possibility of defeat.”
Here indeed there were jeers, whistles, boos and a few cries of coward and traitor.
“At least defeat in the short term,” continued Dr. Altmayer. “What thus interests me is a planned retreat, an evacuation. A Dunkirk, if you will—but on a global and extra-planetary scale. I know what you must be thinking, and your are, of course, correct. You are a room full of rational thinkers, skeptics. Maybe there has never in human history been a room as full of skepticism as this one. And you are right to doubt. Based on the information available to you, you are right. What I hope to do in the next several minutes is expand your information so that you understand, as I do, that what I propose is not impossible. More, that it is a reality.
“But, first, what is it, practically and precisely speaking, that I do propose? Notning short of this: an evacuation of several hundred human beings from Earth to somewhere beyond it. And what information do I share to make such a proposal seem achievable? Project Aegis.”
“Never heard of it!” somebody yelled.
“You have not, that is true. I would hazard a guess that perhaps only a handful of you have heard of it. That is by design, for until now it has been a secret project. A top secret project. My project.” Saying this, Dr. Altmayer felt both a profound relief and a profound sadness, both tinged with a drop of pride. “At the present time—at this very moment—orbiting the Earth is a space station, a space station larger and more advanced than any that has ever existed. A space station that is a station only temporarily, for it has the capability of becoming also a space vessel. A space station that for the last seven years has orbited the Earth without being detected, for it is cloaked. And if it is unseen by us, my dear colleagues, I am willing to risk my professional reputation that it is likewise unseen by whatever approaches us from space. We have, therefore, at our disposal a hidden sanctuary, an invisible escape pod. An undetected outpost."
“For a mere few hundred people.”
“Yes, for a few hundred. But a few hundred is infinitely superior to none. A few hundred people may secure the continuation of our species,” said Dr. Altmayer. “Such is the magnitude of the events enveloping us."
“Let us therefore hope never to have to undertake such a desperate measure—yet be fully prepared to do so,” he concluded a few minutes later, after describing the general technical considerations related to his project, and the cloaked space station itself, to which he referred simply as the Aegis. “Thank you.”
The uniformed speaker thanked Dr. Altmayer for his presentation and called the next person to the podium to speak. But just before he did: out of the corner of his eye, Dr. Altmayer saw the mysterious raven-haired woman push off from the wall against which she had been leaning and head confidently toward the stage. “Please welcome,” said the speaker, “Dr. Irena Dovzhenko."