The Emisary

The Emmisary

The Interview Between Strom Leitner (AP) and John Adkins - NSC


         “Well, all I can do is tell you what I remember.”
         “Thanks.”
         “I worked for the CIA in those early days. Don't get any romantic notions about that. I began as a research analyst which, in the grand scheme of things, was maybe a pay-grade or two above a clerk. What I did for them is read. I read field reports, summaries of actions, project sit-reps and briefing reports, budget requests – stuff like that. My job was to kinda keep track of all this data, collate it, make sure that it went up the ladder to the right rungs, and finally to look for patterns. I know that sounds vague. Maybe it is vague but I was tasked with reading a lot of small bits of data and then stepping back to look at the big picture and if I saw something worth reporting, then I did. Data breaches, penetrations, any problems that might otherwise fall through the cracks.”
         “Sounds straight forward enough.”
         “Yeah, well, it was until 7/22 and that's when everything changed.”
         Strom adjusted the tape recorder pushing it a little closer to John Adkins and took a sip of coffee. “A lot changed for us too since that day. A lot changed for everybody.” An odd little smile crept onto his face like he harbored some secret joke or maybe he got lost for a moment in a reflection and was pleased by it. “Please, continue.”
         “I was in a position to observe a lot of things. A lot of the reports that came my way were inter-agency; Homeland Security, Defense Intelligence Agency, occasionally NSA but not very often, SIG/INT, JSOP. But after 7/22 the Deputy Director changed the ball game or maybe the game changed him. Over the next month or so I started getting reports from research labs, university projects, big pharma, medical research firms. They all had to do with genetics and research connected to human genomics. It was like all our priorities changed after First Contact. I suppose that shouldn't be any surprise. We used to call ourselves the Paranoia Protectorate. People were going crazy. You remember the media then?”
         “Oh yeah. I was smack in the middle of it.”
         “I remember that afternoon. Somebody wheeled in a monitor and we watched the clips of the ship landing in Mojave on CNN and then after that you couldn't watch anything else. The Deputy himself came down to talk to us. He told us that we were going to get a lot of material from the military agencies and that we better roll our socks up because he was afraid we were about to get swamped. Shit, he was right about that. We all started working like fourteen hour days after that. We had to.”
         “Me too. It was a crazy time all around.”
         “Hell, it was just like in the movies. The Day The Earth Stood Still. Everybody had a conspiracy theory. Half the country thought we were being invaded by evil aliens and that Obama was somehow responsible. The religious folks had a field day. Judgment day was finally upon us. Remember the Repent movement? Talk about wackos. The scientific community was screaming for access to the landing site and the military kept everybody away, at least for a while. Heads of state from all over the globe wanted in and there was all kinds of talk about military interventions. Half the politicians in Congress wanted to nuke the ship and the other half wanted to meet the Emissary personally and were pissed when the answer was No. Schools and businesses closed. Even the stock exchanges closed for a few days. A first for that. There were demonstrations in the streets. Remember Paris and Berlin and New Delhi? But CNN kept on rolling. It was an interesting time. I remember when the President went on TV for that first press conference and tried to calm everybody down and how it almost became violent. Then I read a memo from the National Security Adviser that the White House and the Emissary chose to strangle information for awhile, to keep a lid on things and to keep control of the public message. They figured that if little or nothing happened then the whole crisis mentality would slowly peter out kinda like a news cycle. I think there may have been some wisdom in that.”
         “Did it?”
         “Yeah. Kind of. When no armada of invaders showed up and no giant robot appeared on the National Mall and when Obama told the public that the Emissary had come in peace, that he, the military and a handful of scientists were quite sure of that and that the Emissary wanted to work with us through the UN and that all of us were still safe and good then people took a breath and went back to work and life resumed more or less as it had been.”
         “Okay, but what was it like for you?”
         “Nothing like business as usual, I can tell you that. I remember the first reports from DIA. It turns out that the Emissary chose Mojave because of Edwards Air Force Base and all the aerospace contractors located there. He knew that our scientists and engineers would want that most precious of all commodities, data. Propulsion, metallurgy, avionics – the whole spectrum. The first thing the Emissary did was to advise the Contact Team from NORAD that arrangements would be made for inspections of the ship but he insisted on an orderly approach to it. I think he foresaw that without some means of crowd control his ship would be stampeded and ransacked. Forty eight hours after the landing reports started coming in here. I have to confess that there is a kind of tedium to what I do but by Contact +2 days, it was exciting just to be here. Just to see what was going to happen next. Then I got to read all the reports from Walter Reed Hospital. You know, the initial quarantine and all that. Then they proved up that the Emissary was nearly genetically identical to humans. When that was released, I think a lot people started to cool down. And then there was the preliminary reports from Martin-Grumman, Rocketdyne and Boeing from their inspection teams. You had to cut through a lot of technical engineering crap but my first summary was just what you would guess; they didn't have a lot to report in the way of answers but they sure had a lot of questions.
         “What do you mean?”
         “They had no idea what the ship was made out of but they had a pretty good idea what it wasn't.  A team from the United Rocket Alliance filed a one page report with the Pentagon that said that as far as propulsion was concerned they had nothing meaningful to report but that investigations were in progress. On Contact +3 days, I received a schedule printed up by the White House for meetings between the Emissary and the heads of engineering consortiums to facilitate their inspections and answer their questions. It is, of course, history now, but the Emissary was just as he said he was; transparent and I imagine that you are pretty aware of all the new technologies we have because of him?”
         “Hmm. Maybe you remember it, but my wife wrote a book about ten years ago, it was called 'The New Wind' and it traced the history of the New Renaissance back to the Emissary's arrival from a cultural and economic perspective but she dealt with a lot of the technology issues as well. It was a best-seller for a while.” Strom looked down at his feet as if embarrassed that his wife had published before he did.
         “Yep. I remember. That was required reading around here for a spell but not for the reasons you'd think.”
         “How's that?”
         “The Deputy wanted to know how she came up with her data. She was pretty accurate and he was concerned that she shouldn't have been.”
         “Really? She'll be pleased to hear that.”
         “Then the newspapers and magazines got into it with special additions right, left and sideways. Astronomy Today got in the first licks in their article explaining how the Emissary came from what we call Cygnus Epsilon and that he was part of another human race, another intelligent species. And then Scientific American published their genetic similarities article and there was Nature and Science. There were thousands of them when you add up the European and Asian journals and me, hell my whole staff, couldn't keep up with those.”
         “What did you do?”
         “I met with the Deputy and we created another department just to handle the public media flow so that we could back to business. By Contact +21 most of the stream of reports coming in here concerned mostly security issues. The Joint Aerospace Command still had big concerns. NASA, JPL, the ESA and just about everybody else with access to a big dish were kept on heightened alert. There were a lot of folks in the Pentagon that believed that the Emissary was here just to feel us out before launching an invasion. But no little green men in space ships with laser cannons showed up and the security agencies wound down when the powers that be realized that the only real threats to global security were coming from  religious factions and that was business as usual.”
         “But what about the change in the data streams that you mentioned?”
         “Hmm, it was Contact +23 – yeah, that was the day the Emissary appeared for the first time at the UN. That was almost as much a media frenzy as First Contact.”
         “Oh yeah, I remember that quite well. I covered it for the AP. It was nuts. You would have thought that the Beatles had been resurrected. Sorry, I think I just dated myself. There must have been a hundred thousand people in the streets and the National Guard came in to keep order.”
         “The Emissary spoke to the world that day explaining his mission of peace and progress for the human race and I think the most amazing thing about it was that the whole world listened. The Emissary laid out his plan to help us – to increase our technological development beyond anything we could imagine, to provide sustainable energy solutions, to employ agricultural techniques that would feed the world and eliminate starvation, to eradicate disease, to create a system of global security that would eliminate militarization and to teach us economic principles that would eliminate poverty. It was almost too good to be true. But a lot of people bought into it. In retrospect, I think that it surprised me then and still does.”
         Strom just shook his head. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation – 1835, Thoreau – there were a lot of people that were desperate and frustrated that society's problems weren't really being addressed and that the rich were just getting richer. I think the mass of people really wanted to believe.”
         “I think you are absolutely right about that. It was around Contact +35 or so, the Emissary met with leaders from the World Health Organization, the CDC, the Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria, the CDC in India and China - groups like that – to discuss comprehensive health care reform and disease eradication. And then teams of geneticists from all over the world met with them in Bern. Out of that conference came the end of cancer, bacterial born illness, viral illness and that was just a start. It was at that point that we started focusing on everything to do with human health, virology, oncology, genetics and in particular, the human genome.”
         “What was your sense of it?”
         “You know, it's been what, twenty five years now, but my feelings about it haven't changed much.”
         “How's that?”
         “Well, early on, like I said, there was a lot of paranoia. A lot of reports were written by field agents that were sure that all these miracle cures were part of a huge conspiracy to degrade the human genome. Some thought that through genetic manipulation, the Emissary was going to transform us into some kind of alien life forms and then enslave us. It sounds utterly ridiculous now but then there was real fear. Remember the A1-L3 Vaccine? Remember how half the damn planet refused to be inoculated at first and then it took almost ten years before people woke up and accepted the fact that the vaccine worked and that nothing was wrong. And during that time deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, HIV-aids and the whole spectrum of cancers pretty much disappeared. You know the average life expectancy is now pushing one hundred and ten? And that's just in twenty five years.”
         “You said that your sensibilities about it haven't changed. Please explain.”
         “At the time that all these changes were happening I kind of looked at it as too good to be true. Maybe I'm old school or maybe its because I grew up in New England but when something looks too good to be true it usually is. I've had this abiding sense that sooner or later the hammer is going to fall. Mind you, that feeling isn't based on any data that I can talk about. It's just well, for now, let's call it a feeling. Maybe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I just don't trust our good fortune.”
         “Did you take the cure, as it were?”
         “No, I didn't. But look, I'm an old man and I've had a good life and I'm pretty healthy so I guess I just didn't see the need.”
         “How'd you get around the compulsory vaccination law?”
         “How else? I cheated. Let's just say I've had access to certain restricted personnel files and they happen to include my own.”
         “Really.”
         “Un huh.”
         “So, here we are, the twenty fifth anniversary of the First Contact, Contact + 25 years as it were. As a species we have one world government, no longer do we waste our resources on military adventures and armaments, we are disease free, hunger and poverty has been eliminated and economically we have been liberated from the creation of debt and every man, woman and child has the opportunity to prosper. So, I have to ask this. It is really why I am here doing this interview. After two and half decades being on the inside of the intelligence world have you come to any conclusions? Any unique perspectives?”
         “Yeah. I've come to two. The first you could read in the summary reports I've written over the years and sent up the government chain. I have reported that it is all good. That everything the Emissary promised has come to pass, that there appears to be no conspiracy to take down the human species and, plain and simple, we are all much better off for it. Well, it appears that we are supremely better off for it”
         “What is the other?”
         “That is personal. It's my own thoughts on  it.”
         “And....”
         “Well, here's the deal. The biggest fear in all this is that the Emissary is part of a great conspiracy to transform the human race into something it isn't, right?”
         “Un huh.”
         “Well that is exactly what has happened.”
         “What do you mean?”
         “Think about it. Disease has been virtually wiped out world wide. Infant mortality is almost non-existent. Birth defects no longer occur. Arms, legs and various organs can now be regenerated. Through Neural Elastic Reconstitution addiction and a long line of behavioral disorders no longer exists. Through genetically manipulated agriculture, human hunger no longer exists. Geo-anthropologists believe that human life expectancy will increase past one hundred thirty in another twenty years. World population growth is finally leveling off. Violent crime rates are approaching zero.”
         “What's wrong with that? Aren't these the kind of things that we've been hoping for? That science itself aims for?”
         “Yep. No question about that.”
         “So what's your point?”
         “Do all these wonderful changes – do they sound human to you? I mean, far be it from me to object to progress. But does this sound like the same human race you were born  into?”
         “Like you, I am old enough to remember what our fellow humans were like before First Contact. Just off the top of my head, did you know that from the year 1900 up to First Contact more than 110,000,000 people were killed in armed conflicts of one kind or another. And there was nothing to indicate that would ever change. So to answer your question directly, No. No, humanity as we now know it seems nothing like what it used to be.”
         “And that's my point.”
         “Is that so bad?”
         “Listen, you're a smart man. So listen carefully. As you already are quite aware, I've had access to intelligence information from assets in the field when I was with the CIA all the way to the highest possible levels of government since I came to work for the NSC. It is quite possible that I know things that very few a privy to. Very few. You follow my drift?”
         “Yes, I do.”
         “So think about this. What if, just what if the Emissary represents another intelligence species that is entirely similar to us except that they are few steps farther along the evolutionary path.”
         “Okay.”
         “Now suppose that this other species wants to invade and conquer our sweet little Earth but wants to do so with the least amount of damage as possible. I don't mean a hostile take over with guns and bombs and laser cannons and all that rot. I mean, what if they want to come here and move in and assimilate us. Now, if you were part of something like, how would you want to find us upon your arrival?”
         Strom looked up and with a quick realization paled. “Yeah, I think I understand what you mean.”
         “Un huh.”
         “So what you are telling me is....?”
         “Un huh.”
         “And you know this?”
         “From the highest levels.”
         “Does that mean...? I uh, I mean, when?”
         “Well, today is the twenty fifth anniversary of First Contact.
         “So, uh, that means...?”
         “Yep. I'd say sometime later this afternoon the first wave of ships will arrive....”