Gene Doucette: The Spaceship Next Door

“This is a preposterous conversation.”

“I have a lot of those.”

“…Even assuming you survived, you wouldn’t know what to do with me.”

“Why would I have to do anything? Ideas can just be ideas sometimes, right? Look, you don’t have anything to lose. In a couple of minutes you’re going to go back to the whole kill all the people thing you’ve got going on, so I’ll end up dead either way. I’d rather go by way of the greatest idea ever. I mean, if you aren’t exaggerating.”

He fell silent, which she took to mean he was thinking but could also have meant his ship diagnostic was finished and he’d managed to overcome the distractions Annie kept throwing at him for long enough to notice that Violet was sitting in a camper a fifty yards away.

“All right,” he said.

The gentle blue of the interior brightened, and then crawled inside of her, or so it seemed. She was being pulled away from reality, down Alice’s rabbit hole, up the tornado spout and into Oz.

Ideas already in her head connected with other ideas already in her head, establishing relationships with one another she couldn’t believe she’d never seen before. These weren’t strictly her own ideas. They were things she’d picked up from books, and movies, and school, and Violet. They were ideas other people had that she’d taken and made a part of her. They fit perfectly, and then started to connect to other things: things she’d never known before, that nobody on the planet had ever known before.

There was a vast network of interconnected ideas in her mind, Einstein’s grand theory of everything multiplied by ten, laid out across extra dimensions. It was beautiful, and very nearly too much to bear.

Then came the idea.

He was right. It was the greatest idea she could have imagined.

She thought maybe her mind really was going to explode.

The President of the United States was in the second year of his first term when an extraterrestrial vehicle landed in Massachusetts and changed the world.

It made for pretty good politics.

There were a lot of complications, certainly. The riots were bad. International politics got about ten times weirder. Suicide rates were alarmingly high. But at the same time, a smart politician could capitalize on the upside of being in charge when the world changed, while suffering from almost none of the customary downside.

There was no alien invasion, no need to develop some kind space armada—as if that was even an option—and no cities were destroyed. No ultimatums were issued or negotiations brokered with alien generals. Essentially none of the options from any work of fiction on the subject ever came up.

Instead, strategies were debated and official plans drawn up within the government, while outside, in the declassified world, the president ran for re-election with the pedigree of a wartime commander-in-chief, only without the body count.

The whole time he was busy being A Leader, effectively Handling The Situation just like his campaign strategists said, there was the nagging thought in the back of his mind: what if I actually have to make a decision here?

He knew the doomsday scenarios. He signed off on them. But by the third year, with the ship still showing no signal of intent, he figured he was in the clear. Maybe the worst-outcome plans they’d drawn up would get used one day, but it would be a day long after he left office, and a decision made by someone else.

The ship was not so kind.

In front of him was an executive order. It had been drafted over a year ago and left unsigned in a folder kept in a locked safe somewhere in the White House. He didn’t even know precisely where that safe was, and made a note to ask his chief of staff later. (It was a strange thing to think, but it had been a strange night.)

He was at the head of a table in the harshly labeled ‘war room’ of the building. It was a surprisingly pedestrian room: no polished oak tables or any of that. Half the chairs were of the folding variety. It was not a room meant to impress like the Oval Office was, because nobody who required impressing was allowed into the war room.

About the only cool thing about it was the monitors on one wall, which carried all kinds of interesting satellite feeds depending on the crisis.

At this moment, the screens were dark, and the president was alone. He’d already received the formal briefing, which included a long list of the world and national leaders who signed off on the decision he would be making as soon as he put his signature on the bottom of the order. He wished some of those leaders were in the room and literally standing behind him, telling him that what he was about to do was the correct decision.

He picked up the pen, and hoped to God it was.

The phone began to ring.

It was a conference room speakerphone. It sat in the middle of the table, looking somewhat flying-saucer-like. There was only one button on it. Hitting the button opened a line to the switchboard, and the White House switchboard could place a call from there to any place in the world.

It wasn’t the sort of phone line people called into.

He pushed the button.

“Um… hello?”

Mr. President! Hi, I’m glad I caught you.”

It was a woman’s voice, but he didn’t recognize it.

“Is this the switchboard? Whom am I talking to?”

“It’s Annie. Annie Collins. We met once, but I’m sure you don’t remember. I’m calling from Sorrow Falls.”

“Miss, I don’t know how you got this number, but you’re going to be in a great deal of trouble.”

“I know , it was tough! The ship was already jacked into the White House Wi-Fi, but it took, like forever to find a port to a video feed, and then it turns out you’re in a room without security cameras. Figures. Anyway, had to try a few numbers.”

“What ship are you talking about, Ms. Collins?”

It was a prank. Clearly. The worst timed prank in the world.

“Look, I don’t have a lot of time. After I hang up with you I want to call my mom, I know she’s probably flipping out, but I figured I’d better get you first. Before you nuke the town.”

“How could you… Who are you, again?”

“Annie. Like I said, the ship was already hooked up to the White House. It has the Pentagon too. Has everywhere, actually. It’s how it was learning about us. Advance probe and all that.”

“The spaceship, you mean.”

“Yeah, that ship. So the nuke isn’t a big secret. But look, it’s not going to work.”

“I’ve heard a lot of expert opinion that thinks otherwise.”

“Sure. Okay, so, first problem. You guys use GPS satellite targeting, right?”

“I think we do. Ms. Collins, how old are you?”

“I’m sixteen, but I don’t think that’s relevant right now. Hang on, I’m gonna conference in Steve from the Pentagon.”

Steven Prentiss was a three-star general. Exactly two people in the world called him Steve: the president, and Mrs. Prentiss.

One of the screens on the wall blinked to life. It was a wide-angle shot of Massachusetts. Wide meaning it was far enough up that it was difficult to tell where the state was except for the Cape Cod hook on the right. A pinpoint dot generated by the satellite delivering the image identified Sorrow Falls, in the northwestern part of the state.

“Mr. President, you asked for the satellite imaging?” Steve said. It was definitely Steve’s voice. “Did you wish to watch?”

“I haven’t signed the order yet, Steve. Stand by. Ms. Collins, can you tell me why I’m looking at this?”

“Can you zoom in?” she asked.