The Trojan Horse

Chapter Two

Washington DC

USA, Day 1

“We beat you to it!”

Jayne Rowling allowed herself a half-smile as Gareth Robertson smiled triumphantly at her. The veteran reporter had never adapted very well to the increasingly digitalised world of media production, distribution and occasionally manipulation. He would have been comfortable working in a newspaper office from the early 1950s — back when women knew their place and served only as secretaries — but the internet, blogs and even cell phones increasingly confused him. What kind of world was it, he’d wondered to her once, where just anyone could post their facts and opinions online for the whole world to see? And what kind of world was it where an embarrassing media mistake could be made on Monday, exposed by Tuesday and often forgotten on Wednesday? Too many careers had been terminated by online experts pointing out the mistakes of veteran reporters.

Robertson wasn’t even correct! True; CNN had been the first major media distributor to discover that alien starships were orbiting the Earth, but the internet had been buzzing with rumours ever since the first alien message had started to be picked up on the planet below. It had only avoided general distribution through the more reliable blogs and online websites because few of the reputable commenters had been willing to risk their reputations by adding their imprint to the impossible disclosure. The downside of the new media environment was that any number of distortions, conspiracy theories and outright fabrications could be given the same weight as an official broadcast from the American Government. And there were those who believed that nothing the government said could be treated with anything, but extreme scepticism.

Jayne herself tended to consider herself a reporter first, a commenter second. As a young student, she had found herself at the forefront of the new age of media distribution, a position that had allowed her to parlay her considerable experience with computers and online networks into a position in one of the foremost media corporations. It hadn’t lasted; she’d discovered that seniority was the rule and only a handful of the most talented newcomers could hope to climb their way to the top, toeing the official line as they served the organisation’s owners. Jayne had seen how both left and right-wing corporate owners had insisted on pushing forward one point of view while burying others… and then simply carrying on, trusting the public’s short attention span to ensure that any mistakes were quickly forgotten. The uncritical support her employers had given to a single presidential candidate had sealed her urge to go independent and she’d found herself working as a freelancer for the newly-formed Blogger Association Network. Individual bloggers were often frozen out by the big corporations; a network of bloggers, a vast distributed smart mob, was a much more formidable opponent. And online, where facts could be checked and rechecked by millions of independent experts, the BAN had rapidly earned a reputation for honesty, fairness and integrity. There had been mistakes, of course, but they had all been admitted by the network. Few media corporations would be so quick to confess error.

She settled back and surveyed the White House Press Room. It was heaving with reporters, with a handful of camera crews in the back filming everything that transpired and beaming it out live to the entire world. The media corporations had hated the thought of streaming their product onto the internet for free, but they’d rapidly discovered that the world was moving ahead anyway, despite their protests. Everyone would be sharing the same material, editing and reloading it for themselves. This time, however, the entire country would be watching the unedited live feed. The President was going to address the nation.

Covertly, she glanced down at her Iphone and scanned the latest updates from a handful of social networking sites. The number of followers of the raw material had gone up into the millions, heading towards a billion. More and more would be signing on to watch, or sitting down in front of the television to watch on CNN and Fox as the President addressed the entire nation. Someone had already downloaded, transcribed and uploaded the entire text of the alien message onto the internet. A hundred experts had already confirmed the existence of the alien ships and started to speculate on how they might have crossed the vast gulf of space to reach the Earth. Warp drives, wormholes or even alternate dimensions seemed to be the favoured possibilities.

The Washington Press Corps was known for being rowdy — years of media manipulation and spin had turned most reporters into hardened cynics — but this time there was a sense that they were staring at historic, even world-changing events. Jayne had been a child when the planes had hit the Twin Towers, yet she still remembered the shock that had consumed her parents, teachers and other adult acquaintances. No one had known what was going to come next; no one had known that the terrorists couldn’t launch a second strike within days. This was the same; whatever else happened, the Earth would never be the same. The internet talked of hundreds of thousands of people suffering from shock — or disbelief — as they digested the news. And the experts kept bringing up examples from the past; the Native Americans, the Aztecs, Imperial China, Imperial Japan…

They own the stars, Jayne admitted to herself. We’re nothing to them.

In her youth, Jayne had been a Star Trek fan, but she’d never understood the Prime Directive’s logic. The UFP had surrounded countless worlds less advanced than the Federation, worlds with civilisations that would find themselves constrained by the Federation’s dominance of the surrounding star systems, civilisations that would never be able to build interstellar empires of their own. And now, however she looked at it, humanity was in the same position. The stars seemed to hem the human race in, confining her race to a single star system…

The room hushed rapidly as the President’s Media Aide appeared from the side of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice picked up by the tiny microphone at his neck and broadcast across the room, “the President of the United States of America.”

Jayne had never been quite certain what to make of President Patrick Hollinger. On one hand, he was a quiet, almost studious man, a candidate no one had seriously expected to reach the final stages of election, let alone win. On the other hand, she could see how such bland, almost characterless traits would recommend him to the general public, a public that had become increasingly sick of political scandals, extremism and the sheer poison boiling through the political. Hollinger was no great man, but then… the public had chosen to reject those who claimed to be great men. Time would tell if it had been a wise decision, or if it had been one of many mistakes that had placed an unsuitable candidate in the Oval Office.

“My Fellow Americans,” the President said. His voice was firm, at least, the voice of a friendly headmaster or family attorney. He could convince people that he was there to help, even if he couldn’t be inspirational; he could help them to lead without seeming to lead himself. But Jayne wasn’t too impressed. The measure of a President lay in how he responded to crisis… and Hollinger had found himself confronted by the single most shocking event in human history. “This is a momentous day for our world.”

He looked directly into the cameras, a skill practiced by every modern politician. The reporters might write favourable reviews of his speech or they might pour scorn on his words, but their opinions weren’t the important ones. Research had long shown that a President’s position in the opinion polls often depended more upon how he approached the average voter, rather than the reporters. Quite a number of promising political careers had been terminated by playing to the reporters, rather than the watching population. And the politician who accidentally allowed his contempt for the voters to show would find his career coming to a messy end.

“We have asked ourselves for years if we are the sole form of intelligent life in the universe,” he continued. “We have looked up at the stars, realised that they are suns just like the one that gives light and heat to our world, and wondered if they harbour their own worlds with their own intelligent races. The question we have wondered about for centuries has been answered. We are not alone in the universe.”

A low mummer ran through the reporters. Many of them, Jayne knew, had wondered if it was a hoax, or the first step in a cunning plan to reshape the world. The internet had a vast number of people who — already, in the first few hours after First Contact — had produced a vast range of conspiracy theories, ranging from the US having built and launched the starships in secret, to a mad plan from the scientific community to convince the world to declare a truce, destroy all of mankind’s weapons, unite the world and accept peace forever more. Hearing the President, a man globally respected if not always loved, telling the world that the aliens were real put an end to any real doubts among the audience. The world had changed forever.

“Seventeen alien starships have come to Earth,” the President said. “I have been assured by my military chiefs that they have posed no threat to our world. They have made no signs of hostile intent. Indeed, they have broadcast messages of greeting to the human race and invited us to join the Galactic Federation. A new world has been born today and we are the lucky ones who will bear witness to humanity’s entry into a wider galactic community.

“There are those who have greeted the arrival of our visitors with fear and terror. There are those who believe that the aliens do not come in peace, that they come to conquer the human race. And yet I must say to the world that there is no sign that the visitors have hostile intentions. A new day has dawned and I ask only that we greet the new world with the confidence and maturity that it deserves. There is no need to fear the changes the aliens will bring to our world. The human race will survive and prosper.

“The aliens have requested a meeting with the United Nations,” he concluded. “I will be present in New York, as will many of the world’s leaders, even those who would normally be considered pariahs in the global community. Together, the human race can meet any challenge; we can walk into the future with our heads held high.”

He bowed his head, slightly. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “Goodbye — and God bless America!”

Jayne watched as the reporters scrambled forwards, shouting questions. The President’s Press Secretary had warned them before they were invited to the speech that there would be no time for questions, but that hadn’t stopped any of the more obnoxious reporters. There were no answers from the President; instead, the next speakers waited for the hubbub to die down before they started to reassure the country — and indeed the world — that there was no danger. Shaking her head, Jayne settled back in her chair and produced her palmtop from her handbag. She’d have a preliminary blog message up within the next thirty minutes, with her comments and insights on the President’s speech for her followers. One thing stuck in her mind. The President had seemed pretty certain that the aliens came in peace.

She smiled, recalling the thrill of the chase. Was there a reason for his certainty?

Back in the offices that made up the heart of the federal government, the President looked a great deal less certain and reassured. Toby presented him with a cup of hot coffee and watched while he sipped it gratefully. The President worked far harder than anyone outside the Cabinet and his aides understood and anything Toby could do to lessen the stress, he would. He really needed sleep, but that wasn’t likely to come. It wasn’t a coincidence that almost every modern President saw their hair turn grey while in office.

“We had almost total media saturation,” Toby said, once the President had taken his seat and placed his elbows on the desk. The vast array of military and civilian advisors and subordinates had their orders. In a way, there was nothing for the President to do, but worry about the future. “Ninety percent of the public will have watched your speech.”

“Good,” the President said. It was very rare to interrupt the non-news channels on television, let alone try to stream a single message onto all of the entertainment channels on the internet. That, if nothing else, would ensure that the President’s speech was watched, if not always believed. Toby’s father, he thought, wouldn’t be reassured at all. He and his friends had been preparing for the collapse of government and society for years. “How are we standing on the economic front?”

Toby made a show of consulting his secure palmtop, although he’d already memorised the last update from the Treasury Department. “The New York Stock Exchange is looking shaky, but the experts believe that it will remain fairly stable for the next few days, barring a sudden change in the global situation,” he said. “There’s been increased demand for stock in corporations that manufacture weapons, bomb shelters and camping gear — public demand has gone off the scale. I think that we will see increased absenteeism at work for the next week, but as long as there is no sudden change it’s quite likely that everything will return to normal fairly soon. And the holiday trade has seen a massive spike in activity. Everyone who can rent a place to live outside the cities is doing precisely that, Mr. President.”

“A great many people are nervous,” the President said. “Do you think that I reassured them today?”

“I believe so,” Toby said. There was no way to know for sure. The world was still reeling from the concept of aliens visiting the Earth. Everyone had seen movies, TV serials and even novels detailing a thousand different alien plans to conquer the Earth. Independence Day had seen massive flying saucers floating over cities and burning them to the ground; others, like Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, had shown a more subtle form of invasion. There were far fewer movies centred around peaceful alien contact — and many of them, like The Day the Earth Stood Still, had implied that evil forces within the government or military would seek to harm the alien visitors. “I think the sense of distance is lending some enchantment. It would be a different story if the aliens were hovering over our cities.”

The President nodded, thoughtfully. “And the meeting in New York?”

Toby smiled. Once the alien message had been picked up, the government-operated transmitters that normally served the nation’s network of spy satellites and military communications systems had been used to contact and establish a link with the alien ships. Reluctantly, the NSA had allowed representatives from a handful of other governments to monitor the transmissions, but little had been forthcoming from the aliens. They’d simply stated that they came in peace, that they were emissaries from the Galactic Federation and requested a meeting with world leaders. Surprisingly, they hadn’t attempted to suggest a location or even a time and place. They appeared content to allow the human race to handle matters without further pressure. Toby wasn’t sure if it showed a willingness to show respect for the human race, or if it was a very slight insult. Or maybe it was simple ignorance. The aliens presumably knew little of how the human governments operated.

Or maybe not. We come in peace. Take us to your leaders. How long had they studied humanity to know those terms? They could have been watching and monitoring the Earth for hundreds of years…

“The military will be establishing a no-fly zone over the city,” he said. The USAF had actually wanted to keep substantial forces in the region — backed up by carriers from the Navy — but the politicians had insisted on keeping a low profile. “We’ll use unarmed aircraft to escort the alien landing craft to the city, while the NYPD and National Guard will ensure that there is a secure perimeter around the landing site. There’s still some confusion over security within the UN itself, but we think we’ll have it sorted out by the time the aliens actually land.”

The President snorted. Nearly every world leader of consequence — or considered himself to be of consequence — would be coming to the landing. The Secret Service — responsible for the protection of the President and his family — would be coordinating their efforts with British, French, German, Russian, Chinese and even Iranian security personnel. Only strict orders from their political masters had ensured some degree of cooperation, although as the deadline drew closer, Toby fully expected the various security teams to start picking fights with one another. The whole situation would have been unthinkable only a day ago.

“And everyone wants to know our position in the talks,” Toby concluded. “The Cabinet would like to schedule a formal meeting to discuss the issue tomorrow.”

“That won’t be an easy task,” the President said. “They’ve told us almost nothing.”

He didn’t mean the Cabinet, Toby knew. The Galactics — the term had started on the internet and spread around the world within hours — had told their human hosts almost nothing about the Galactic Federation, or what membership in it actually meant. How could anyone bargain with the aliens when no one even knew the rules of the game?

“Yes, Mr President,” Toby agreed. “The analysts have already prepared a list of possibilities…”

The President smiled. “Possibilities,” he repeated. “And what are the odds of even one of them being right?”