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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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SNAKE OIL
By Doctor What
Chapter Four
Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be. – Rita Rudner
~~
February 7, 2017
“Please step this way, Mr. Baldwin.”
Michael dutifully followed the soldier who had been stuck with the unenviable task of ‘assisting the honored guests in their inquires’ at this meeting. He had gotten stuck with a few babysitting missions back in his time in the Sandbox and he knew what a pain in the ass it was to have to deal with clueless civilians who wanted to look all cool and groovy but seemed to totally miss the concepts of ‘follow my instructions’ or ‘I’m here to help you—I’m NOT your freaking servant’.
The soldier led Michael to desk where a few other soldiers were busy checking the credentials of the other guests. Michael nodded his head at the soldiers and handed over his ID.
While a desk soldier checked over a few things, Michael glanced over to his ‘minder’.
“So—exactly how many are showing up at this shin-dig anyway?”, asked Michael.
“About forty altogether. We’re still waiting for the French and the Brit contingent to show up.”
“What about Doctor Kasjusz?”
“Your boss? Still not here yet unfortunately,” replied the soldier. He paused for a moment before continuing.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, sir – but why are you guys going up first? I mean –the first humans to actually go up on the Visitor’s spaceship, the first ones to get a tour, the first ones to accept delivery of the first batch of stuff—shouldn’t…you know…there be big important people going up?” Realizing his blunder, the soldier added hastily, “ Uh--I mean –bigger important people? Uh—not like you guys aren’t important, of course…”
“Relax soldier—I know what you mean. You want the official explanation or the unofficial explanation?”
“Er—both if you can…”
“Officially –this is not an official tour or even an official meeting. We are ‘merely’ accepting delivery of certain goods and welcoming the aliens to the Earth and laying in the all important diplomatic groundwork for the real and truly important and totally official meeting that will take place tomorrow between the aliens and the world leaders and that will be televised worldwide.”
“And unofficially?”
“If something fucks up—then instead of the really important people getting killed, all that’s been lost are a bunch of useless advisors and civilians and aides.”
The soldier nodded his head in understanding.
“Ah—so you’re the expendable crewmembers in the redshirts.”
“Pretty much.”
“Sucks to be you, huh?”
“Welcome to my life.”
Michael leaned back in his chair in the waiting room and waited for his boss to show up.
There were about thirty or so others in the room, either milling around in small groups, frantically re-reading their notes or talking on their cell-phones and getting last minute instructions from their superiors.
Michael had decided to ignore everyone and try his best to relax.
He glanced through the newspaper in his hands.
Amazingly, the aliens were no longer dominating the front pages anymore. After all—‘First Contact was a full two weeks ago, right? Still talking about the aliens now? Boooor-ing!’
Instead, the media had moved on to much more important stuff of a topical nature –like the economy and politics.
The economy was—to put it bluntly –in total chaos.
Leaving aside the fact that the alien cures had effectively put nearly every pharmaceutical company on the planet out of business –or at least scrambling like crazy to ‘adjust to the new realities’ – all of the other stuff that the aliens were offering were causing the markets to go, in the words of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve during an unfortunately ill-advised candid interview, ‘fucking totally ape-shit’.
The news that the US had acquired both the fusion generators and their blueprints caused oil markets to go into free fall. Conversely, the fact that the Germans had acquired a method to turn seawater into fresh water that cost literally half a penny per cubic meter was playing havoc with the lucrative bottled-water global market, with the American based Poland Spring company declaring that their company finances will need to be ‘restructured’ (Translation: “We need to start finding ways to save the pensions of our executives cause the company itself is about to go tits-up”). It was rather unfortunate that a prominent German cabinet minister (with rather poor English speaking skills), upon hearing the news about Poland Springs’ financial difficulties, declared to a British newspaper that ‘Germany shall conquer Poland by the spring!’.
The Russians had managed to get their hands on a ‘soil-purifying’ device that apparently completely destroyed any toxins – cheaply and efficiently and virtually instantaneously—that exists in any soil you run through the machine. The Russian Agricultural Minister had made several public declarations that ‘Siberia shall became a Paradise on Earth’ before going on several incoherent rants about chopping down all of Siberia’s forests and turning the whole area into ‘vast fields of wheat…wheat as far as the eye can see…oh yes… wheat…glorious, glorious wheat…oh yeeeeeess…..” before he was quickly replaced with someone else. The official explanation was that he had suffered a ‘reaction to some medication’ and was now ‘resting comfortably’ somewhere.
There were no less than seventeen different patents for various computer and electronic technology that had been divvied up between several countries that were considered to be ‘quantum leaps’ in technology. Basically every single piece of electronics on the planet was going to be considered to be the technological equivalent of bear skins and flint knives within 18 months -- which was good news for the electronic companies that were headquartered in the countries that acquired the technology but not so good news in the rest, with a wave of acquisitions and mergers already being announced. American car manufacturers had announced that the first genuine ‘flying car’ would hit the market by June of 2018. Not to be outdone, European car manufacturers had announced that their flying car would be on the market by May 2018, with Japan announcing the day before that their flying car would be on the market by April 2018. The fact that nobody had actually received the plans on flying cars just yet didn’t seem to faze anyone.
And all that had happened just in the last two weeks. Michael didn’t even want to think what the next two weeks was going to be like.
Stockbrokers around the world were in danger of becoming raging alcoholics or anti-depressants addicts trying to deal with the stresses of the market breaking new highs and lows virtually every day.
Fortunately the cure for anti-depressant addiction had been acquired by the Swedes.
Unfortunately the cure for alcohol dependency had been acquired by the Russians.
The rest of the paper had to deal with all the political ramifications from the Contact.
Michael was a lot closer to the real story about what was going on in the political background than most members of the news media.
Not that that didn’t make anything make any more sense, unfortunately.
Generally speaking, the opinion of what to do with the technology being offered were, broadly speaking, broken into three categories.
The first group was the ones who referred to themselves as ‘peacemakers’ and referred, rather despairingly by others, as ‘naïve idealists’. Their basic premise ran along the lines of “The Aliens are being ‘world-class bastards’ (American view), ‘total wankers’ (British view) and ‘really not that nice’ (Canadian view) by deliberately snubbing some countries. Clearly they wanted to create divisions and recriminations among the nations of the world. Therefore we could beat them at their own game by putting aside our differences and share all the tech without any conditions.” This was, of course, a most logical and reasonable and thought-provoking and equitable and sensible opinion to have -- so consequently they were in the minority.
The second group was the ones who referred to themselves as ‘moderates’ and referred as either ‘greedy bastards’ or ‘not seeing the whole picture’ by the others, depending on who you asked. Their basic premise ran along the lines of “Well—of COURSE we’ll share the technology. We’re not arguing with that idea. But we have a rare opportunity here to alleviate some long-term issues we have with some nations and rectify those issues with some long-overdue concessions”. Michael had figured that this was bureaucratic-speak for ‘getting even with the countries that have been pissing us off’. The nature of the ‘concerns’ and how to ’alleviate’ them differed widely –the Canadians, Swedes and Norwegians were pushing for ‘human rights’ as the main concession, the Americans and Brits were pushing for ‘opening up the markets to foreign investments’, while the French were going on –for some inexplicable reason-- about ‘everybody converting to the metric system’.
The third group was the ones who referred to themselves as ‘pragmatists’ -- and ‘bat-shit insane war hawks’ (Americans), ‘nutters’ (Brits) and ‘Er…a bit…off, non?’ (Canadians) by the rest. Their basic premise ran along the lines of “Well—fuck them! This is our chance to finally kick ass (arse) and become a Superpower! Eee-Yah!” followed by some rather distasteful and, quite frankly, disturbing hand and body gestures.
Fortunately that group was a minority. A very LOUD minority, mind you, but still—just a minority.
The thing was—if it had been just one country offered the deal, then something resembling a coherent action plan would have been developed sooner or later.
This wasn’t the case. Twelve different countries had been offered the deals. Twelve different leaders. Twelve different agendas and election platforms and ideologies. Twelve different groups of advisors. Twelve different populations to appease for the next election.
Trying to get all of the countries to agree on one plan was the equivalent of trying to herd cats.
Fortunately there had been a few successes. India was brought on board with few objections (other than from Russia but then again--Russia was arguing with everyone so this wasn’t that much of a problem). The other major Commonwealth countries that had been left off the contact list were also brought in with few objections, as well as a few other European and South-East Asian countries.
But China was still an issue and no amount of diplomacy from the other countries was calming them down.
It was all rather depressing.
“Michael!” shouted a voice.
Michael tore his gaze away from the newspaper to see his boss – the Special Advisor to the President for Alien/Human Policy Affairs, Dr. Loew Kasjusz – hobbling over to him, his cane making tap-tap-tap sounds on the floor.
As usual, he had a tuft of white hair flopping in front of his face that was almost – but not quite –blinding him. Also per usual—he had a huge goofy grin on his face.
“Waiting long, Michael?”, asked Loew, shaking hands with Michael. There was still just the tiniest hint of an Eastern European accent to his speech, a remnant that he wasn’t able to get rid of despite his many years living in the West.
“Not at all—trouble finding the place?”
“Got totally lost!”, said Loew, cheerfully. “Although that’s not new. Did I ever tell you the time I got lost in my own house?”
“Many times, Doctor.”
“Ah—so I did. So when are they going to let us on to the ship?”
It was half an hour later before the Visitors’ ‘spaceplane’ showed up.
Michael was impressed – despite the fact that it was a very featureless and dull gray ship that was vaguely the same size and shape as the Space Shuttle – it came practically floating down silently from the sky and was already on the ground before half the assembled crowd even knew it was there.
The interior of the ship surprised him– cramped seats, garish colors that seemed to hurt his eyes, stale air, bizarrely written manuals, and incomprehensible spoken language erupting from the speakers on a semi-regular basis.
It was eerily similar to pretty much every passenger plane he ever flew in.
Loew was disappointed to discover that there were no windows on the ‘spaceplane’ - “And I really wanted to see Earth from orbit too!” – but he recovered quite quickly. Upon being informed by one of the aliens –also named ‘Bob’ -- that it will take half an hour for the ship to get to the main ship that was in geosynchronous orbit over the U.S., Loew shrugged his shoulders and went to sleep, asking Michael to wake him up when they arrived. Michael barely heard the request, as he was still processing the fact that the rather ungainly looking ship they were in was going to be travelling at 45,000 miles an hour.
He barely felt the ship take off and never even felt the acceleration.
Michael looked through some reports in his hand, trying to get some reading done before the big ‘unofficial’ meeting. He glanced over to see Loew sleeping peacefully if a bit noisily.
Like many things in his life, Michael wondered just how the hell he ended up in this situation as well.
Dr. Loew Kasjusz was considered a legend.
He spoke eighteen languages fluently, another fifteen semi-fluently and five more well enough to get by ‘as a tourist’. Considering that of the five languages that Loew spoke ‘as a tourist’, three were languages that each had just twenty thousand or so speakers left alive, one was spoken by only fifty people in a small region in southwest Uzbekistan and one was a language that has been extinct for two thousand years, Michael was more than a little impressed.
Aside from being able to read and write nearly all of the languages that he spoke, Loew was also able to write in Assyrian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan glyphs effortlessly.
Loew’s IQ had been variously measured to be 178, 187 or 192 (depending on which test you looked at) but Michael was fairly convinced that the true number was, if anything, much higher. Loew had written over a dozen books on the subjects of comparative linguistics, religion, history, politics and sociology. Nearly all of his books were considered essential reading by any halfway-serious student of those subjects. Once, Michael had tried to count the number of university courses in North America and Europe that used Loew’s books as textbooks and gave up counting when he hit five hundred.
Hiring Dr. Kasjusz as a Special Advisor to the President for Alien/Human Policy Affairs was a no-brainer, as far as everyone was concerned.
Needless to say, Michael was more than a little surprised when he discovered that he was to be Dr. Kasjusz’ assistant – or rather – Assistant. By all rights, he was barely qualified to serve Dr. Kasjusz coffee, let alone be his assistant—er—Assistant.
He had snooped around to find the reason for this.
There had been a few reasons—some that Michael agreed with; others he didn’t.
Dr. Kasjusz was considered in some circles in Washington to be a ‘dangerous left-winger’. Ironically –in other circles (notably France and—for some inexplicable reason –Scandinavia) he was considered to be a ‘dangerous right-winger’ instead. In any case, he was a civilian and it was felt by certain unnamed individuals in the higher echelons of power that a ‘non-civilian perspective’ was needed to bring ‘balance’ to any of his opinions or views.
Also playing a factor was that –while Loew was clearly a genius –he was, like many life-long academic types, unfortunately somewhat lacking in social skills. It wasn’t that Loew would go out of his way to insult a person– quite the opposite, in fact; Michael found him to be one of the most personable people he ever known—but Loew was the type of person who, if somebody was being particularly dense in his presence, was not adverse to telling said person that they were being dense.
The incident where Loew had told the President of France at a party (where a simple political debate had quickly degenerated into a particularly nasty battle) that the President was from le lignage desloial et felon (Loew, of course, had used Old French instead of Modern French) was noteworthy and probably had something to do with his ‘dangerous’ reputation in France.
The last thing was a particularly sensitive topic. Loew was getting on in years and, while he was still considered sharp as a tack, there have been growing signs that Dr. Kasjusz was becoming a bit…odd.
In particular, he seemed to be developing a gradually degenerating obsession with the Mandaeans and was constantly finding ways to slip them into every conversation, no matter how tangentially related the topic may be.
Michael had fumed for a while when he found out why he had been hired. Being essentially a ‘minder’ to a professor and making sure that the prof didn’t say anything crazy and that he wore his underwear on the inside of his pants wasn’t exactly how he pictured his career path (such as it were) going.
On the other hand—aside from the Cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff---he was probably one of the most well-connected individuals in Washington.
And because of that—he was actually about to go on board an actual alien spaceship…
Who said dreams don’t come true?
When the spaceplane docked half an hour later, ‘Bob’ the steward slowly led the assorted aides and advisors out.
There were in one gigantic hanger bay.
Michael was a bit disappointed.
He had been ruined by Hollywood, of course. Hollywood always depicted the interior of spaceships as something put together with the aesthetics of your stereotypical flamboyantly gay French fashion designer. Granted—the ‘science’ behind how the spaceships worked also looked like they were put together with the help of your stereotypical flamboyantly gay French fashion designer as well but still…
Here however—the ships and everything in it were…functional. They did the job that they were supposed to do. None of this ‘pastel colors and smooth surface and soft curves on everything regardless of function’ stuff. The spaceplane looked like …well…a spaceplane. The boxes and crates? Boxes and crates. The tools were a bit different than he was used to but he had no delusions that they had been built to do the equivalent of screwing a screw and hammering a loose thingy down or whatever. And why build in white when a dark grey can do the job just as well? If they were feeling funky and a bit cool and groovy—then they apparently went with a dark blue motif.
Forget about pastels…
As the aids and advisors stared in wonder, Michael slowly took in the entire area.
It was…in a word…dull.
Well---that sucked… thought Michael.
Running to and fro and busy at work were at least a dozen aliens.
Michael hated to say that they all looked alike but –really—they all did look alike.
Granted—staring at the aliens for a while made you realize that there were small and subtle differences between them. This alien looked a good two inches taller than the others. That alien looked like he was a full ten pounds heavier than his colleagues. The other alien over there had antennae that were a shade darker in color than the others.
But overall?
It was like looking at copies of the same alien.
Michael found that…interesting.
“Greetings,” said one alien, as he appeared in front of them. “My name is Bob. I’m here to help you. Please walk this way.”
And with that—the group followed Bob down the corridors.
“Interesting ship you have here, Bob,” said Michael a few minutes later. “I assume that was the engine room we passed a few seconds ago?”
“Yes. We’re very proud of it.” said Bob, his antennae waving.
“How—exactly—does it work?”
Bob shrugged his shoulders.
“We punch in the coordinates, we push the button and –voom! –we’re there! I’m not an engineer so I can’t give you the details. Please step this way—the observation deck is right this way.”
The assembled group stared in silence at the image in front of them.
It was the Earth—from 22,000 miles away.
It hung there, blue and white and fragile, in the huge ceiling to floor windows that dominated the room.
It was…
…beautiful.
“Damn…” said Michael, almost reverently.
“So?.” said Bob cheerfully. “Before we start shipping your products down to Earth and work out the details for the meet tomorrow--shall we go to the planet you call Mars for a brief visit?”
As one, the heads of the forty assorted individuals stared at Bob.
“Seriously?” said one person in the back.
“But of course! Why not?” said Bob, still cheerful.
Bob cocked his head to one side for a few seconds and closed his eyes.
Opening his eyes, he turned to face the crowd.
“Here we go! Activating FTL drive in five, four, three, two, one…”
Michael felt his stomach drop out, his head spin and his ears nearly fall out. Almost instantly, he saw the observation windows become filled with…. whiteness?
It was as if they were going through a tunnel filled with rushing white water.
He had barely enough time to even have this image register on his mind when the whiteness disappeared and they dropped out of FTL.
Mars.
Shit…we’re in orbit around…Mars.
I’m actually standing in an alien spaceship in orbit around Mars.
Fuck.
This…is…I’m not sure what it is…but it’s fucking cool.
And Mars is right there!
Right there!
In front of me!
It’s…it’s…it’s…
Well…red…
God…that was such a lame thing to say…
Michael glanced over to Loew.
He too was staring in awe at Mars.
“Absolutely incredible, isn’t it, Doctor.” said Michael.
“Yes! Very much so!”, said Loew, not taking his eyes off Mars. “Especially on today of all days! Most auspicious!”
There was a long pause.
Which was then followed by a slightly longer pause.
Which was then followed by an even longer pause.
When it became obvious that no more was forthcoming from Loew, Michael decided to bite the bullet.
“Ummmm—Doctor—what is auspicious about February 7?”
“Hmmmm?” asked Loew, quizzically, taking his glasses off and cleaning them on his shirt. He put them back on and resumed staring at Mars. After a few seconds, he cocked his head to one side—then cocked it to other side for a few seconds more. Finally he shook his head.
“Nope. Can’t think of anything offhand. What makes you think that February 7 is an auspicious day?”
There was a very long pause as Michael –very carefully—tried to phrase his question.
“Umm—you did. You just said that today was most auspicious –today of all days.”
“Hmmmm? Oh yes! But I wasn’t referring to the date! I was referring to the fact that it was Tuesday!” replied Loew, smiling.
Michael very slowly shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Exhaling slowly, he opened his eyes and turned to stare at Loew.
“And the reason that Tuesday is so auspicious is because….?”
“Many ancient peoples believed that each day is governed by a specific planet. Today is Tuesday—or as the Mandaeans referred to -- Thlatha Habshaba -- and as such is governed by Nirigh, the Mandaean version of Mars. Rather ironic that we will arrive on Mars on this of all days, yes? But don’t be fooled by such simplistic terminology in thinking that it was solely governed by one planet. The day is divided into two parts of twelve, twelve day-hours and twelve night-hours. Certain melki also govern the days, and hence have a planetary character, for instance, Sunday, which is governed by Shamish, is also associated with the personified Habshaba, First-Day-of-the-Week, a malka who is sometimes identified with other saviour-spirits. He takes purified souls in his ship to Awathur and –“
“Thank you Doctor!”
They spent twenty minutes in orbit over Mars before the alien ship returned them back to Earth.
Michael had decided then and there that there were two things he needed to accomplish in his life.
One was to find out everything he can about the ‘Visitors’
Two was to return back to space….
~~
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