What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance in 2011 on images of the dusty slopes of Mars' Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars. The hole, shown in representative color, appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right. Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep. Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern. Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life. These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers. via NASA https://ift.tt/2T8SqWB
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden delivers remarks at his primary night election event in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 29, 2020.
JIM WATSON/Getty Images
COLUMBIA, South Carolina—The people filling Joe Biden’s election night party weren’t grimacing as polls were about to close this time. With MSNBC playing in University of South Carolina volleyball arena, the Biden fans counted down the final seconds until 7 o’clock, when polls closed. There was no lag between the end of their countdown and NBC News’ official projection: Joe Biden had taken South Carolina, his first win in a presidential primary or caucus in 33 years of running for president.
The atmosphere in the room when Biden came into room to deliver his victory speech 90 minutes later also felt different. It was a moment of rapturous excitement and purpose for a candidate who, for much of the last year, had been searching for both.
“To all of those of you who’ve been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign,” Biden said. “Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead. Now, thanks you all of you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we won—and we won big.”
He did. It was a dominant performance, exceeding that of Bernie Sanders in winning the Nevada caucuses the Saturday before. According to early exit polls, black voters made up nearly 60 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in the state—and Biden won, in turn, about 60 percent of black voters, with runners-up Sanders and Tom Steyer each trailing him in that demographic by about 40 percentage points. Steyer, who had staked his campaign on a strong showing in South Carolina, announced he was dropping out of the race following a distant third-place finish.
Sanders was by far the best-liked candidate among South Carolinians, as three-quarters of voters said they viewed him favorably, compared to roughly half viewing Sanders that way. Biden won about half of those identifying as either moderate or conservative, and this was a more moderate electorate than those of other early states—half of South Carolina voters described themselves as moderate or conservative, while that number was 33 percent in Nevada entrance polls and 39 percent in New Hampshire exit polls.
South Carolina was always a good fit for Biden with its older, more moderate, and majority-black electorate. But what happened in the last week, after he was only holding onto his polling lead in the state by the skin of his teeth? There was one startling note in the exit polling data: About half of voters said that the Biden endorsement from Rep. Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip and the most widely respected figure in South Carolina Democratic politics, was an “important factor” in their decision. No other endorsement has had as powerful an impact this cycle, and maybe in any cycle within memory. In his speech, Biden credited Clyburn, who “lifted me and this campaign on his shoulders.”
In a state that Republicans have taken in every presidential election from 1980 on, where Donald Trump won by 14 points in 2016, the primary was South Carolina Democrats’ only real chance to have leverage over the presidential race. They apparently used it to bend the campaign back, at least for the weekend, to where it stood when Biden entered the race in April as the instant front-runner—before anyone was paying attention to Pete Buttigieg, and before the billionaire entrants tried float themselves into contention on a flood of campaign spending. Michael Bloomberg wasn’t on the ballot in South Carolina, but Biden unambiguously won back the voters who had been gravitating in the polling to the free-spending Steyer.
Sanders’ Nevada win, rather than boosting him to a victory in South Carolina that might have effectively sealed his control of the race, may have woken up moderates to the fact that he was on his way to the nomination, sparking a flight to safety and familiarity. Sanders hasn’t seen much of a Nevada bounce at all, and he received more scrutiny in Tuesday’s debate than he had in any debate previous.
Mike Kelly, a Biden voter I spoke with at Biden’s rally Saturday night, said he made up his mind “this morning” after having considered Biden, Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg. What was the selling point?
“I’m just hoping that somebody can beat Trump,” he said. “It’s that simple.” Kelly described himself as a centrist who likes some of Trump’s policies, including those on immigration. “He’s just an asshole.”
Mohamad Kaba, a Biden canvasser from Maryland, told me he was devoted to Joe Biden “for life,” he said. He had traveled to both New Hampshire and South Carolina to support the campaign. He couldn’t believe the difference he got in reception between the two states.
“Here? People love him,” Kaba said. One major thing he’d hear knocking doors, he said, was the “fact that he worked with Obama, and people want him to improve Obama’s health care, to make it better. People love him.” Biden’s association with Barack Obama wasn’t evidence of the softness of his support, as if his core supporters would all flock away once they learned more about Biden’s record on its own terms or they considered other candidates. It was evidence of the strength of it.
Biden wasn’t subtle in setting himself up as prime alternative to Sanders in his speech, and called on the party to unite behind him—quickly. Addressing “
“If Democrats,” he said, “want as a nominee someone who will build upon Obamacare and not scrap it; take on the NRA and gun manufacturers, not protect them … and if the Democrats want a nominee who’s a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat, then join us.”
For one night, at least, Biden was gaining on Bernie Sanders in the delegate count—and in one fell swoop, surpassing him in the national popular vote. The question is whether South Carolina’s results can convince the rest of the country to reconsider the value of the race’s best-known figure before Super Tuesday arrives—and how wide the delegate gap will be between Biden and Sanders by the end of the night. The good news is there’s barely time to speculate about it. You can just wait 72 hours and find out.
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Passengers wear face masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus as they arrive at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California on February 29, 2020.
MARK RALSTON/Getty Images
It seems the surgeon general has had it. And he has a simple request for Americans: Stop buying face masks. He was so serious about that message that he wrote it in all caps. “Seriously people,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote on Twitter, “STOP BUYING MASKS!” Adams went on to note that masks are “NOT effective” for the general public and the demand from those who don’t need it puts healthcare providers at risk.
In a subsequent tweet, Adams said that the best thing people can do to protect themselves from the coronavirus is to wash their hands regularly and stay home if they are feeling sick. Adams is hardly alone in his sentiment. Vice President Mike Pence espoused much the same message during a White House briefing alongside President Donald Trump. “The president mentioned masks,” Pence said. “This morning we talked a great deal about additional medical supplies. Let me be very clear, and I’m sure the physicians who are up here will reflect this as well: The average American does not need to go out and buy a mask.”
Healthcare professionals and government officials around the world have been calling on people to stop buying masks as some are taking advantage of the situation and sharply increasing prices, particularly on N95 masks. A 10-pack of those masks that sold for $18.20 a month ago now costs $99.99 on Amazon, notes CBS News. Other retailers that sell for far lower prices are largely out of stock. In Italy, Milan’s deputy chief prosecutor said officials had decided to open an investigation amid reports of severe price gouging. “We have decided to open an investigation after media reports of the insane prices fetched up by these products on online sales websites in the last two days,” Tiziana Siciliano told Reuters.
The World Health Organization has also warned of a decrease in supply. “There are severe strains on protective equipment around the world,” said Dr. Michael J. Ryan, executive director of the health emergency program at the World Health Organization, during a briefing on Friday. “Our primary concern is to ensure that our front line health workers are protected and that they have the equipment they need to do their jobs.” But despite all the warnings and assurances that they are ineffective for regular people, it seems unlikely to decrease demand since going out to buy masks is more about psychology. “The coronavirus is coming, and we feel rather helpless,” William Schaffner, a preventive medicine professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told CNN. “By getting masks and wearing them, we move the locus of control somewhat to ourselves.”
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A police vehicle sits outside of Mercy Hospital on Nov. 20, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Chicago police officers shot a man inside a busy subway station during Friday rush hour and it was all caught on video by a bystander. The shocking video that quickly became viral on social media shows police appearing to shoot the man as he was trying to flee. The man’s apparent crime? Moving between two train cars, which is a violation of a city ordinance.
The officers went after the man from the train onto the platform, where there was a struggle as they tried to place him in custody. The video shows how the officers each fired a Taser to try to subdue the man. They also used pepper spray on the man but that didn’t seem to do much. That is when one of the officers drew her firearm and appears to fire a shot at the man, who then ran up the escalator. One more shot is heard on the video but the officers and the man could not be seen.
Chicago police said the man was shot twice and was taken to hospital, where he underwent surgery and is in critical but stable condition. “We are conducting concurrent criminal and administrative investigations into this incident,” police Deputy Superintendent Barbara West told reporters. The officers were taken off patrol and given paid administrative duties while the investigation continues.
“I have viewed the widely shared footage,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a tweet. “With the strong caveat that one perspective does not depict the entirety of the incident, the video is extremely disturbing and the actions by these officers are deeply concerning.” The mayor also expressed support for prosecutors to go directly to the scene of the shooting. “To ensure full transparency and accountability, I support Superintendent [Charlie] Beck’s decision to contact the State’s Attorney due to the potential criminal nature of this incident,” Lightfoot tweeted.
The FBI is now working with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office in the investigation as possible criminal charges are being considered. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois criticized “the lack of meaningful de-escalation by Chicago police officers” and called for “a full investigation into this event, with appropriate transparency and accountability.”
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President Donald Trump takes questions during a news conference at the White House February 29, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
A patient infected with COVID-19 in Washington state has died, becoming the first person to die of the new virus in the United States. The King County patient is believed to have contracted the virus from “community spread” rather than travel, officials said.
Initial reports said the patient who died was a man but President Donald Trump said in a news briefing Saturday that the person was a “medically high-risk patient in her late 50s.” Trump characterized har as “a wonderful woman.” Earlier, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee had referred to the patient as male. “It is a sad day in our state as we learn that a Washingtonian has died from COVID-19. Our hearts go out to his family and friends,” Inslee said. “We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus.”
Amid the increase in cases, the U.S. banned travel to Iran, extending the existing travel ban to any foreign nationals who had been in that country over the past 14 days. The State Department also increased travel warnings and is recommending Americans not travel to parts of Italy and South Korea. Vice President Mike Pence announced the new measures alongside Trump, who said his administration was considering additional travel restrictions, including possibly closing the U.S. border with Mexico. “We’re thinking about all borders,” Trump said.
Trump said there are 22 people in the United States infected by the new coronavirus, including at least four who don’t have any history of travel or known contacts with anyone who has traveled that would tie them to the virus. These four cases include, a woman in Oregon, a high school student in Washington state, an older woman in Santa Clara County, California, and another woman in Solano County.
The number of confirmed cases around the world crossed the 85,000-mark Saturday. More than 79,000 of the total were in mainland China. A total of 2,941 deaths were reported, including 43 in Iran, 29 in Italy, and 16 in South Korea. The largest outbreak outside China is in South Korea, which reported 813 new cases Saturday to bring its total to 3,150. In Iran, five members of Parliament tested positive, showing how the virus is spreading among the country’s politicians. Tehran has reported over the past week that seven of its government officials, including one of its vice presidents, tested positive for the virus.
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The entrance to Alienstock festival in Rachel, Nevada on Sept. 20, 2019. The festival was held near Area 51.
BRIDGET BENNETT/Getty Images
Hi Future Tensers,
The gloves are off in the 2020 presidential primary, and I’ve found myself almost missing the days of 20-plus candidates taking turns telling us what they’d do on day one in office. Kirsten Gillibrand said she would’ve Cloroxed the Oval Office. Bernie Sanders would legalize marijuana, and Elizabeth Warren has made 24 day-one promises, the most of any candidate. But I wish one of our candidates would cop to the truth: On day one as president, wouldn’t you ask whether we have an alien?
In our latest Future Tense fiction short story, “It Came from Cruden Farm,” Max Barry, author of funny/alarming sci-fi novels like Jennifer Government, imagines a newly inaugurated president meeting a “sentient sofa” held in Area 51, and it raises all sorts of questions, starting with: What’s the proper pronoun to use?
After you read Max’s story, check out the response essay by Sarah Scholes, author of They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. Scoles takes on the widespread suspicion that the government is hiding an extraterrestrial something from us: “Bill Clinton revealed that during his time in office, he’d asked his people to look into both the Area 51 and Roswell files … but if you’re inclined to believe in a cover-up, isn’t this affirmative just further evidence of disinformation?” For Scoles, the Area 51 conspiracy (and Barry’s short story) has legs because “the government has the means to pull off an alien coverup.” The truth is out there!
Here are some of the best articles we published recently:
Three Questions for a Smart Person
Lucianne Walkowicz is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium and co-founder of the JustSpace Alliance. I spoke with them about exoplanets and extraterrestrials.
Margaret: Of all the alien arrival flicks, which one gets it best? Lucianne: I really like Arrival best. A lot of other movies about alien arrivals put it as something that is universally feared, but Arrival does an amazing job at showing the diversity of reactions that humans would have.
What’s your favorite exoplanet?
Obviously, the answer is the TOI700 System that my student Emily Gilbert just found. She’s a University of Chicago student who’s working with me and a team of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and just discovered the first habitable zone Earth-sized planet from the TESS mission. So, yeah, no big deal.
What do you wish you could tell all these billionaire space explorers?
Space exploration is a collaborative human endeavor and that’s something you can’t buy.
Future Tense Recommends
I recently discovered the photos of Alastair Philip Wiper, a British-born, Copenhagen-based artist. He photographs places and things that are normally unseen, but which make the modern world possible: factories, shipyards, laboratories, and machines—lots of gigantic, complex machines. The photographs in Wiper’s new book, Unintended Beauty, which comes out in April, offer the visual satisfactions of symmetry and eye-popping color and intricate detail. But for all their precisionist beauty, the images are also shadowed by what’s been sacrificed to these machines—the slaughtered animals, the wrecked landscapes, the thousands of low-paid workers—that we usually take for granted.—Jason Lloyd, managing editor ofIssues in Science and Technology
Upcoming Future Tense Events
On March 5, bring your devices and join us for How to Protect Yourself Online, a happy hour/hands-on cyber self-defense workshop we are hosting with New America’s Open Technology Institute, PEN America, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The event will be held in Washington and starts at 6 p.m.
If you think the government has more information about UFOs than it’s letting on, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the majority. A 2019 Gallup poll revealed 68 percent of people feel that way. Thirty-three percent of all respondents said that they believe UFOs were built by aliens from outer space.
The Venn diagram center of those two groups clings to one of the most enduring conspiracy theories: The Government (it’s always with a capital G for believers) is squirreling away information about alien spacecraft. This idea appears, and has for years, on internet forums, social media, TV shows, memes, movies, and, of course, fiction, like Max Barry’s “It Came From Cruden Farm.”
Almost as interesting as any government secret is why it’s kept secret. And for alien UFOs, the conspiratorial answers span a whole spectrum: They’d cause too much peace, make too much chaos, give too many people too much technology, or, maybe—as is the case in Barry’s story—just be a real disappointment. Because the why here has so many potential answers, believers can choose the one that makes most sense to them or tick off “all of the above.”
The public doesn’t know what goes on inside Area 51. To think that there must be something truly incredible inside—that has the mouthfeel oftruth.
Even powerful politicians, it turns out, think there may be more to the saucer story than meets the public eye. That’s why, when presidents become presidents, sometimes they, too, take an interest in the extraterrestrial. On Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2014, for instance, Bill Clinton revealed that during his time in office, he’d asked his people to look into both the Area 51 and Roswell files. “If you saw that there were aliens there, would you tell us?” Kimmel asked.
“Yeah,” said Clinton. (But if you’re inclined to believe in a cover-up, isn’t this affirmative just further evidence of disinformation?)
The president in Max Barry’s story similarly uses his power to seek out ufological secrets—immediately after his inauguration. The Air Force chief of staff, to the president’s surprise but perhaps not the reader’s, confesses that, yes, there is a specimen from space. It is, just as last year’s would-be raiders suspected, tucked away inside Area 51, a notoriously secretive Air Force installation in Nevada, whose existence wasn’t officially acknowledged till 2013 (although, you know, we knew).
It makes a certain sense that in this story, and in popular consciousness, the government holds these celestial secrets. After all, it alone meets the classic criteria of guilt: Means. Motive. Opportunity. Those elements make the conspiratorial conviction feel juuuust plausible enough. And if a hypothetical narrative is juuuust plausible enough, adherents have juuuust enough ground to remain standing on it—which is part of why this conspiracy theory has long, sturdy legs.
First of all, the government has the means to pull off an alien cover-up. Unlike individual humans or companies attempting to enforce dubious nondisclosure agreements, the military and intelligence communities have the authority to classify information, making it an actual crime to spill the secrets. This confidential information, sequestered in a limited number of brains, can also be geographically sequestered: Military installations take up millions and millions of acres across the U.S. That’s a lot of land to hide behind.
Area 51 is the most famous home of aliens-on-Earth conspiracies. Together, this base and the “secret squirrel” spots it abuts span 2.9 million acres, which is nearly twice the size of Delaware. Guards can put a halt to curious civilians’ trespassing by using “deadly force,” also known as “killing them.” The public doesn’t know what goes on inside Area 51 today, and we probably won’t for decades to come. To think that there must be something truly incredible inside—that has the mouthfeel of truth.
The government is also generally better at cover-ups than your average Fortune 500 company or UFO-hunting individual. Take the real-world 1947 events in Roswell: After a rancher found crash debris on his land, the military first said it came from a flying saucer, then reversed course and called it a weather balloon. That wasn’t true, and officials knew it: The wreckage was from a classified project called Mogul, a high-altitude nuclear-test detector. The government wasn’t covering up aliens, but it did prove itself able to keep the truth hidden for decades.
Information stays shhh within government if it would damage national security. But some scientists have suggested that contact with ETs would actually increase the likelihood of peace on Earth: The existence of extraterrestrials could bring us all together as Earthlings—united not by nationality but by planetarity. We could connect with the cosmos, look at it with a new sort of wonder, and a gratitude that we are not—that none of us are—alone. Plus, whether they’re beaming blueprints through space or propelling their bodies through it, the others certainly have better tech than we do. They could teach us how they built warp drives, or developed self-contained life-support systems, or reined in their social media giants. And if they didn’t teach us, we could strip their spaceship to pieces, figure out how it worked, and reverse-engineer our own—kind of like pre-engineer children deconstruct the electronics in their houses for fun. It could be a renaissance, a high-tech respite from international conflict.
That’s a nice idea. But researchers don’t agree on how people would react to such a revelation. More importantly, no one really has any idea what would happen with the body politic, just as you can guess at how you’d behave if you met Bigfoot, but you don’t actually know. And besides, maybe it’s not in a government’s best interest to unite the people: After all, wars always balloon someone’s bank accounts, and a truly global society could topple country-level leaders. You could see a rationale behind keeping the cosmic visits quiet even if they’d ultimately be good for the little guy.
In the universe of Barry’s story, federal studies suggested that an alien visit wouldn’t swing positive or neutral but ultranegative. Researchers predict conflicts between the great powers, more spying, more assassinations, the dissolution of moderate religion, the blowup of radicalism, immigration issues, etc. These hypothetical woes have the same tenor as the government’s true fears about UFOs, at least in the past, according to a document called the Robertson Panel report. In 1953, the CIA sponsored a small group of scientists and military personnel to evaluate the national security risks UFOs did or did not pose and what to do about it. “The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States,” National Reconnaissance Office Historian Gerald Haines wrote of the report. Governments don’t, in general, want any sort of hysteria or panic within their borders. Ergo, maybe they’d hide, cover up, lie about the potential source of that potential panic. Especially if—as in movies like War of the Worlds, Independence Day, and The Day the Earth Stood Still—the extraterrestrial visitors put forth an apocalyptic threat, rather than a peaceful “How do you do, cosmic cousins?”
Some, though, believe the government is hiding the greatest discovery in human history because its people want to hang on to those spoils. Maybe military engineers are reverse-engineering the saucer (or whatever) in secret. That would keep the technology hidden from foreign nations, giving the U.S. an unbeatable advantage.
Defensive or offensive alien innovation isn’t the only stuff conspiracists think the government might keep from us. Go on the right forums, or WikiLeaks databases, and you can find the idea that ETs have shown us how to get virtually free energy—by harnessing “zero-point energy,” or basically pulling power out of the ether. A government might hide that so it can keep its people poor and dependent, keep big companies in business, and keep the ultimate source of power (literal and figurative) for itself.
In Barry’s story, the motivation for secrecy overturns these tropes, which position the alien as competent and powerful. Instead, Barry’s ET, which the president calls a “sentient sofa,” is the extraplanetary version of an alt-right troll that failed to launch from its parents’ basement. Upon learning this, the president decides to keep the talking couch locked in Area 51. Regardless of the motive, though, the outcome is the same: A high-level politician chooses, as Barry’s does, to keep keeping secrets. “Bury it,” he says.
But if the government says it doesn’t have aliens, believers can say that’s just a lie, further proof of a cover-up. And let’s say 2 million people do one day raid Area 51, and they fail to find anything. Maybe they just didn’t see the secret basement door whose seams are so tight they don’t show up at all. Maybe the Air Force moved the sentient sofa as soon as rumors of a raid spun up. And if a president, like the one in Barry’s story, doesn’t speak of the alien secrets, maybe he just found the truth—and decided it didn’t deserve to be out there.
Illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Danique Dohmen/Unsplash.
Each month,Future Tense Fiction—a series of short stories from Future Tense and Arizona State University’sCenter for Science and the Imaginationabout how technology and science will change our lives—publishes a story on a theme. The theme for January—March 2020: politics.
After the inauguration, the speeches, and the four-jet flyover, the new president walked back toward the Capitol building, clasping his wife’s hand. “That was good, yes?” he said.
“They love you,” said the first lady.
He smiled modestly, but it was true; they did love him. All the way to the National Statuary Hall, where he would mingle with dignitaries for a few minutes before heading to the White House, people stood and applauded.
“Huge crowd,” said Damon, his campaign adviser. “Almost 2013 Obama.”
“Bigger,” said Clara, his press secretary. “Almost 2009 Obama.”
“Almost as big as Trump said his was,” said Damon.
“Well, now you’re being ridiculous,” said the president. He looked at them both. “We did it, huh? We really did it.”
“You did it,” said Clara, who then added: “Mr. President.”
In the National Statuary Hall, the generals immediately made a beeline for him, a solid block of old men squeezed into starched collars and boards. The Navy chief pumped his hand. “Terrific speech, Mr. President.”
“Outstanding,” said the Air Force chief of staff. “The best I’ve heard.”
He smiled magnanimously. “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask. Do we have an alien?”
The Air Force chief of staff blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“An alien.” He winked at the first lady. “I always wondered. You have to tell me. I’m the president.”
The Air Force chief of staff pursed his lips. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Oh, my God,” said the president.
“Perhaps we can save this for a more suitable time,” said the Air Force chief of staff.
“There’s a … ” The president lowered his voice. “There’s really an … ”
“It’s your inauguration,” said the Air Force chief of staff. “I’ll leave you to enjoy yourself. We can discuss these other matters in a secure environment.”
The room was filling with people, most of whom would soon attempt to close in for a quick word or a handshake. “Follow me,” he told the Air Force chief of staff, making for the nearest doorway. Two men in dark suits appeared, part of the Secret Service detachment that swam and mutated around him, occasionally spitting out agents who looked so similar he couldn’t keep track of who was who. “Can you clear this hallway?” They nodded, because of course they could. When they were alone, he asked the Air Force chief of staff: “We actually have an alien?”
The Air Force chief of staff took a long, reluctant breath. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“An alien.”
“We do have an alien, yes, Mr. President.”
He peered into the Air Force chief of staff’s pale blue eyes. “I feel like this might be a hazing ritual for new presidents.”
“I assure you, Mr. President, it’s no joke.”
“An alien. As in … ” He fluttered his fingers. “A spaceship came to Earth.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“What does it look like?”
“The alien, sir? Or the spacecraft?”
“The alien,” he said. “No. Both.”
“The spacecraft was a yellowish sphere that eventually melted away to a stringy, viscous substance. The alien is a blue, jellylike object approximately the size of a family sofa.”
“And we have it?”
“That’s correct, Mr. President. It’s at Area 51.”
The president eyed him. “I want to be clear: If you’re yanking my chain—”
“I’m not yanking your chain, Mr. President. We have an alien.”
“How long have we had it?”
“Twelve years.”
“Twelve!” he said, which echoed through the hallway. He lowered his voice. “Twelve years and no one said anything? Not Bush nor Obama? Not Trump?”
“The alien,” said the president, “and Trump. They didn’t see eye toeye.”
“Trump didn’t like him, sir.”
He paused. “I’m sorry?”
“President Trump didn’t get along with the alien. They had a tempestuous relationship.”
“I bet they did,” he said, before remembering himself. This wasn’t the campaign trail. “You mean he can talk. The alien, that is.”
“Yes, sir. We taught him English. President Trump spoke with him several times.”
“But they didn’t get along.”
“No, Mr. President.”
“The alien,” said the president, “and Trump. They didn’t see eye to eye.”
“That is correct, Mr. President.”
“I swear to God,” he said, “if you’re messing with me—”
“Sir, I have zero sense of humor,” said the Air Force chief of staff. “Ask my wife.”
The president rubbed his chin. “Can I see it?”
The Air Force chief of staff adopted a pained expression. At the end of the hallway, the first lady appeared behind a Secret Service man, raised a thin arm, and tapped her wrist. “I can see you’re busy,” said the Air Force chief of staff. “I won’t keep you—”
“Yes, you will. I want an answer.”
The Air Force chief of staff hesitated. “Well, sir, you’re the president. If you want to see the alien, you can see it. But I recommend against it.”
At the end of the hallway, the first lady put her hands on her hips.
“I want to see it,” the president said. “By the time I get done with the White House ballyhoo, I want you to have a video for me to watch.” He moved toward the first lady.
“Mr. President, there is no video.”
He turned. “What?”
“All evidence is contained within Area 51. It’s considered too dangerous to risk a leak.”
He walked back to the Air Force chief of staff. “You’re telling me that if I want to see the alien, I have to fly to Nevada?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” said the Air Force chief of staff, who did not appear to find this very unfortunate. “Once your schedule opens up, we could—”
“I’m changing my schedule,” the president said. “We leave tonight.”
The Air Force chief of staff’s mouth hung open for a moment. Then he gently closed it.
“And I want you to come with me,” said the president, “because I have a lot of questions.”
“An alien?” said the first lady, when they were inside the limousine.
He nodded. “A goddamn alien.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t joking?”
“That’s what I said. But he insists it’s real.”
“Hmm.” The first lady rested her chin on her wrist and gazed out through the smoked glass at the passing streets. It was beginning to rain.
“So, listen,” said the president. “We’re flying out to Area 51 tonight.”
She looked at him. “What about your schedule?”
“Screw the schedule. I’ve been thinking. This is just what I’ve been looking for. A way to start my term with a splash. What’s the one word I used most on the campaign trail?”
“Scotch,” said the first lady.
“Trust,” he said. “It was trust. It’s time to restore trust in government. But that trust needs to be earned.”
“Yes, I was at the speeches, darling.”
“This alien,” he said, poking his pant leg for emphasis, “has been kept hidden for 12 years. Twelve years! Because the government didn’t trust people to know. Well, they elected me, and I do trust them.”
“Mmm,” she said.
“What?”
“Well, it’s a wonderful sound bite. I know it tested through the roof and won you Ohio. But now that you’re in office, you need to be practical.”
“Actually, I need to do exactly what I promised.” He spread his arms. “Isn’t that a shock? Who could have seen that coming?”
“Darling, you’re being dramatic.”
“Those weren’t sound bites. That’s what I believe. We have to rebuild trust in this country. Trust in government, trust in our institutions, and, most important of all, trust in each other. That starts with what I do on my first day. It starts with this alien.”
“Hmm,” the first lady said.
He took her hand across the leather seats. “Do you believe me?”
She smiled. “I believe that if anyone can do it, you can.”
“There we go,” he said. He felt optimistic. He looked out the window and saw a family waving flags. He waved back, even though they couldn’t see him through the glass. “There we go.”
Air Force One lifted off at 8:11 p.m. Its official destination was an unnamed private airport in Pennsylvania. According to the press secretary, the president was visiting ailing family, in a private and urgent matter that would not be discussed further.
“It’s just that if the first thing you do is hop a plane to Area 51, people will connect the dots,” she said, across the aisle. Clara Fielding was being surprisingly calm about the idea of intelligent alien life, to the president’s mind. He’d seen her scream like a wounded boar over a misworded press release.
“I’ll be connecting the dots for them, soon.” He already loved the airplane. It was fantastically spacious, as if he were hurtling through the air in an apartment. “In fact, I’ve already written up a few words.” He dug into his jacket pocket for his notebook.
The first lady’s brows furrowed.
“What?” he said.
“I know you like to write your own speeches, but for an event of this magnitude, isn’t it better if Jeff—”
“I don’t do it because I like it. It’s more authentic.”
“Yes, more authentic, yes,” she said, nodding, “but Jeff is, you know, a professional speechwriter. In a time like this, don’t you think—”
“I can write a speech. I’m not just a mouthpiece for Jeff.”
“I only mean—”
“Why don’t you listen to it?” he said. “Then you can decide whether Jeff could do better.”
Damon, his adviser, was standing in the aisle, leaning slightly on Clara’s seat. “I bet it’s a knockout, Mr. President.”
“Thank you, Damon.” He kept meaning to get rid of Damon. The guy was a yes man. It was continually embarrassing that he hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. “These are first thoughts. Nothing’s nailed down.” He cleared his throat. “At some point in our lives, all of us have turned our eyes to the stars and wondered whether anyone was out there, looking back. Today, at last, we finally have our answer.”
“Hmm,” said the first lady.
He looked at her. “Do you have a comment?”
“Well, it’s not really ‘today,’ is it? We’ve had the alien for 12 years.”
“And today, the people are finding out about it. They’re getting their answer today.”
“I suppose.”
He looked around. “Should I continue?”
“I’m loving it,” said Damon. “Go right ahead, Mr. President.”
“Employing technology beyond our current understanding, a golden sphere entered our atmosphere and came to rest outside of Richmond, Virginia. From this vehicle, our visitor emerged. He was first greeted by—”
Clara visibly flinched in her seat.
He glanced at her. “What?”
“Nothing, Mr. President. Sorry to interrupt.”
“If you have feedback, let’s hear it,” he said. “That’s what this process is about.”
“Well, sir, I notice you said ‘he.’ ”
The president blinked. “Is that not accurate?”
“My understanding at this point,” said Clara, choosing her words carefully, “is that it’s not accurate, no.”
“The alien is female?”
“I believe it’s neither.”
The president twisted in his chair. “Where’s Mc—” He spotted the Air Force chief of staff at the rear of the room, huddled with a small group of military personnel. The president beckoned impatiently. “Is the alien male?”
The Air Force chief of staff inhaled deeply. He wasn’t missing any opportunities to make it clear that he was here under duress. It was an endless parade of frowns and pained pauses. “Mr. President, as you required a full briefing, I have here special envoy Kevin Pilsman, who’s our mission lead.”
A neat, middle-aged man in a blue jacket stepped forward. “A great pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. I’m very excited about the prospect of finally making our findings public.” The Air Force chief of staff looked pained.
“Excellent,” the president said. “That’s the spirit. Is it male?”
“Strictly speaking, Mr. President, it doesn’t possess sex organs. Not as we’d categorize them, anyway.”
“So it’s sexless?”
“That is correct.”
The president looked at the Air Force chief of staff. “I feel like you called it ‘he’ before.”
The Air Force chief of staff said, “We tend to use masculine terms informally, since it looks male.”
Clara emitted a sound that was something like a grunt and something like a sneeze. The president glanced at her. “Excuse me,” she said.
The first lady offered, “But ‘it’ is so impersonal. Almost frightening. I think it’s an easier sell if we say ‘he’ or ‘she,’ rather than ‘it.’ ”
“Good point,” said the president. “And it looks male?”
“To the eye, yes,” said the Air Force chief of staff.
Clara grunt-sneezed again.
The president said, “Is there something you want to say, Clara?”
“To be honest,” Clara said, “it sounds a little like we’re foisting a male gender onto a genderless creature. Which I would have to say I disagree with.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it’s not. It’s not male.”
“But it looks male,” said Kevin.
Clara turned to him. “I’m given to understand it looks like a rhinoceros crossed with a set of bagpipes. How is that male?”
“It’s really the sense you get when you see it, I suppose,” Kevin said. “It’s, you know, big and ugly.”
“It’s male because it’s ugly? That’s your logic?”
“I don’t care whether it’s ugly,” said the president. “I just want to know what to call it, so I can get past the second sentence of my speech. We’re getting bogged down.”
“Mr. President, if I may,” said Kevin. “We’ve done this a while, and found it easiest to use gender-neutral male terms.”
Clara twisted around in her seat. “Excuse me?”
“I mean ‘he’ in a neutral sense. Such as we might say a jet is reaching the end of ‘her’ service. Obviously the jet isn’t female—it’s merely an expression.”
“Oh, like when you see a dog in the street,” Damon interjected. “You say, ‘There’s a good boy,’ as a default.”
The president looked at Clara.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel like I’m watching the Ten Commandments being written here, and unless I say something, a burning bush is going to be gendered for the next 2,000 years. First, there’s no such thing as a gender-neutral male pronoun. That’s an oxymoron. Second, when you see a dog and say ‘he,’ you’re not assuming a genderless dog. You’re assuming a male dog.”
The Air Force chief of staff sighed.
The first lady leaned forward. “What does it call itself?”
“Ah,” said Kevin. “Yes. Thank you. Male. He refers to himself as a male.”
“Well, that settles it,” said the president. “No objection to using the alien’s chosen pronouns, I assume?” He raised his notepad.
Clara asked, “Who taught it to speak?”
Kevin said, “Pardon me?”
“What has been the gender balance of the personnel who have interacted with the alien over the last 12 years, would you say?”
Kevin glanced at the Air Force chief of staff. “I’m not sure of the relevancy of—”
“Seventy percent male?” Clara said. “Stop me when I get close. Eighty?” She peered at him. “Has it seen a woman?”
“We could use ‘they,’ ” Damon offered. “Or ‘ze.’ Is that right? ‘Ze’ for ‘he/she’ and ‘zir’ for ‘his/her’? I think I’ve heard that.”
“For God’s sake,” the president said. “We’re spending all our time on a single word.”
The first lady said, “This is why I wanted to have Jeff. He can navigate these things.”
“Well, Jeff’s not here.” The president spread his arms. “Do you see Jeff anywhere?”
The first lady crossed her arms.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.” He rubbed his forehead.
“Perhaps a short break,” said the first lady. “You’re running on fumes. There’s no need to figure all this out yet.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He couldn’t stop rubbing his forehead. “Thank you, everyone. I’m going to lie down for a few minutes.”
There was an honest-to-God bedroom, complete with a desk and two sitting chairs. A bedroom on an airplane. He fell onto the bed and stared at the recessed ceiling lights while the first lady gently climbed in beside him. After a minute, she began fooling with her tablet.
“What are you doing?” he said.
She gazed at him over her reading glasses. He’d always liked those glasses. She reminded him of his eighth grade English teacher, about whom he’d had complicated feelings. “The department has run scenarios on going public with the alien. Likely reactions and consequences.”
“What’s the consensus?”
“Well,” she said, scrolling, “they look at different aspects. I can give you the summaries, if you like.”
“Please.”
“International relations: sharply increased likelihood of major conflicts, particularly with Russia and China. Elevated risk of espionage. Elevated risk of assassination.”
“Really? I was thinking the opposite. An alien would unite us as a species. It shows what we have in common.”
“I suppose it’s not humanity’s alien, though, is it? It’s America’s. Will we share it?”
“I guess not,” he said. “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t want this to be political. I want it to help us rise above all that.”
“Next is religion.” She inhaled. “Goodness.”
“What happens with religion?”
“ ‘Wide-scale collapse of faith among moderates, coupled with accelerating radicalism and cultlike behavior in—’ ”
“Really?”
“There’s nothing about aliens in the Bible,” the first lady said. “Possibly that’s a problem.”
“I suppose it’s not humanity’s alien, though, is it? It’s America’s. Will we shareit?”
“These analyses are so pessimistic. That’s the problem with this country. We’ve lost our—”
“Trust?”
“Yes, exactly. We’re all hunkered down, wanting to protect our own little patch from each other. But this country was founded on trust. It’s the basis of the free market. Of the family unit. Every community requires it.”
The first lady’s eyes moved from side to side, reading. “Goodness,” she said. “Immigration is really appalling.”
“Put that down,” the president said. “You know what I keep thinking? Trump knew about this and sat on it. I can’t figure that out. It doesn’t seem in the man’s nature.”
“Perhaps he thought it might upstage him.”
“Or contradict him.” He rolled onto his side. “It’s like a higher power, isn’t it? Like the adults have come into the room and caught us squabbling. Now it’s going to hit us with some home truths.”
The first lady eyed him. “What if we don’t like its truths?”
He shrugged. “I still believe the people deserve to hear it for themselves.”
“Mmm,” she said.
“What?” He touched her hip. “Am I still being a hopeless optimist?”
She smiled, the way he liked, when it was just for him. “I believe you are a decent man, who will always do the right thing.”
“Ever kissed a man on Air Force One?”
The corners of her lips curled. “Ask me again,” she said, “in one minute.”
They touched down and rolled into a gray, unmarked hangar. After that was an elevator, as big as a kitchen, staffed by young men in blue uniforms who stared straight ahead without unblinking.
“The alien is confined to a 20-by-18-foot cage,” said Kevin, the special envoy. “It’s hermetically sealed, for security, and so we can maintain the alien’s ideal climate. Around the cage is a series of metal slats we can open or close on command. And, of course, there’s a microphone, so you can communicate.”
“I can speak to it just like you and I are speaking?”
Kevin nodded. “He speaks English very well.”
The president nodded. “I have to say, I’m looking forward to this.”
The Air Force chief of staff cleared his throat. Kevin said, “There is something you should know. He’ll try to give you a message.”
“A message?”
“Yes, Mr. President. When he receives new visitors, he wants to give them his message.”
“Which is?”
“To be honest, sir, I’d rather not preempt it.”
“Well, I’d rather you did, and I’m the president.” He looked at the Air Force chief of staff. “The alien came to Earth with a message, and I’m hearing about it now? You didn’t think to mention that earlier?”
“Unacceptable,” said Damon.
“The message is a little uncomfortable, sir,” said the Air Force chief of staff.
“Is it,” said the president. This he could believe: that the alien’s message didn’t dovetail with the aims and objectives of the U.S. military.
“And it’s not the case that he arrived with the message. He developed it in the ensuing years.”
The elevator doors began to close, and one of the guards helpfully pressed a button to open them again.
“You know what?” the president said. “I think I’m going to hear it for myself.” He strode between the doors.
Cold air gripped him. In the center of a cavernous space, beneath a ring of glaring spotlights, sat a massive rectangular block shuttered with dark gray metal. Thick tubes and twisted cables rose to the ceiling, where the fan blades turned and hummed.
“That’s it?” he said unnecessarily. His breath fogged.
An alien, he thought. A goddamnalien.
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Kevin. “A secure, climate-controlled environment designed for his particular needs.”
“He stays in there all the time? How does he feel about that?”
“He doesn’t love it,” Kevin admitted. “He’s expressed a desire to leave. But he can’t survive in our atmosphere. He’d need a suit of some kind and a mobility device.” He gestured. “This way.”
The president crossed dark concrete, eyeing the block. He could see the slats Kevin had mentioned—closed now, concealing whatever was inside. Nearby stood an area with tables and equipment: speakers, microphones, and cameras. Twelve years, he thought. A long time for a creature to be kept in captivity. A creature with a message.
They stopped. He glanced around. “Do I need a microphone?”
“No, sir. We have you.”
“And when I say so, you’ll … ” He gestured at the block in front of him.
“We’ll open the slats so you can see each other. Yes, Mr. President.”
He nodded. He was more nervous than he’d expected. Partly because of the historical weight of the moment—footage of which, no doubt, would be placed into the permanent archive—but mainly because of the creature itself. An alien, he thought. A goddamn alien.
He glanced around the group. Damon gave him a thumbs-up. “Open it,” the president said.
There was a mighty crack. Lines appeared in the metal slats, widening, until the president could see slices of the environment within. He thought, Is that it?, because everything was dark and formless, and then, Oh, yes.
His first impression was of a jellyfish, but blue. Instead of tentacles, it bristled with stout pipes of different lengths. Small mouthlike openings grew and closed rhythmically around its body. If it had eyes or ears, he couldn’t see them.
He turned to Kevin. “Can it see me?”
Sound burst from the speakers. Like my father gargling half a glass of water, the president thought. “Who are you?”
He composed himself. “I am the president of the United States. My name is—”
“You’re tall.”
The president smiled, amused. “I suppose I am.” It spoke through its pipes, he gathered; he could see them constrict and loosen. “You have me at a disadvantage, though. I have no idea of your height, relative to your people.”
“I’m tall.”
“Then we are two tall people, you and I.” This was a little mundane, he thought. This wasn’t really what he wanted going into the historical archive. “We come from different worlds, you and I, but here we are, together.”
A cluster of pipes exhaled together. “I have a message.”
“Oh, yes,” said the president.
“It is important. You must listen carefully.”
“You have my attention.”
“It is a warning. You are in danger.”
He felt a cold tickle in his heart. He was the president. He could nuke a city, order an assassination, remake the world. He had run for office knowing the great responsibilities it would bring. Yet he hadn’t expected to be hearing about danger from an alien on day one.
“All of you,” said the alien. “You will be wiped out within three of your generations, unless you take action. It may already be too late.”
It’s climate change, he thought. It’s goddamn climate change. He’d suspected it would be his greatest challenge. Maybe this would be the circuit breaker. An alien come to Earth with a warning—that might convince the coal states. Although it might not. It might only get their backs up, like it had when it was a Swedish teenager.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes,” the president said. “I’m sorry. Is it climate change?”
The alien’s pipes hissed. “Is what climate change?”
“The danger. Your warning.”
“No.”
“Ah,” he said.
“It is far more serious. You face corrosion at the fundamental level of DNA.”
Yikes, he thought.
“Your race will be completely destroyed. Its genome scattered. Reduced to little more than animals.”
“How will this take place?”
“Breeding,” said the alien. “It is already happening.”
“Did you say ‘breeding’?”
“Mixing of the bloodlines. I shall explain. When a white man takes a woman of inferior stock—say, a Negress, or a Jewess—or, equally, the other way, when a white woman is taken by a black—their child’s blood is irreparably diluted.”
The president sucked in his lips. A few moments passed. He stared at the alien. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
“I have more to tell you. My warning is incomplete.”
“Yes,” the president said. “I’m sure. But I just … ” He glanced at Kevin. “Can we … close this?”
Kevin signaled. The slats banged and rattled back together, finally closing off the alien from sight. There was silence but for the humming of the fans.
The president looked around the group. “What was that?”
No one answered.
“I believe I asked a question. What the hell was that?”
Kevin cleared his throat. “I assume you’re referring to the, ah, ideological views that the alien holds.”
“He’s a racist,” said the president. “He’s a huge, flaming racist.”
“Well-l-l-l … ” said Kevin. “We prefer not to throw around labels.”
“That,” the president said, pointing at the wall, “was incredibly, incredibly racist.” He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture that he thought he’d managed to eradicate on the campaign trail. The first lady’s face was ashen. Clara, his press secretary, had her head in her hands. “How is this possible?”
“Mr. President?”
“How is a blue sack a white supremacist?”
“It’s self-hating,” said Damon.
“Actually,” said Kevin, “the alien considers himself to be white.”
“Excuse me?” said the president.
“On the outside, obviously, he’s a semirigid blue gel, but ideologically, he feels an affinity with—”
“Stop,” the president said. “That’s not what I’m asking. I want to know how a sentient sofa becomes a racist. Has it always been like this?”
Kevin shook his head. “His views have skewed over time.”
“How? How does it even know these words?”
“He watches TV.”
The president blinked. “Excuse me?”
“As part of his socialization program, we’ve exposed him to various forms of media. Some radio, some television—”
“What kind of television?”
“Under President Bush, we mostly screened family dramas from the ’50s and ’60s. The alien seemed to enjoy those, although this period predates our ability to communicate, so it’s hard to say for sure. But he would extend his pipes toward the screen during the closing sequence of The Waltons, for example, in a fairly wholesome manner.”
“Then what happened?”
“President Obama was encouraged by his rapid speech development and directed us to open up PBS, C-SPAN, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel, among others. However, the History Channel proved problematic and was later withdrawn.”
“He accused us of a conspiracy to conceal the truth from him. And, to be fair, we really were concealing the existence of analien.”
“Why?”
“The alien became hooked on Ancient Aliens,” said Kevin. “I mean, he really loved it. Not in a Waltons kind of way. It was different. During episodes, his vibrissa became active, and for hours afterward, his pipes inflated and deflated in an agitated manner. The Obama administration grew concerned about this, and about how History Channel content was becoming less … ” He paused, searching for the word.
“True,” suggested the first lady.
“Appropriate,” Kevin said. “Terminating it made the alien very unhappy, though. He accused us of a conspiracy to conceal the truth from him. And, to be fair, we really were concealing the existence of an alien. But anyway, his media intake was then limited until early 2017, at which time the new administration … formed a different view.”
“Oh, my God,” the president said. “Trump showed it Fox News.”
The first lady put a hand over her mouth.
“Yes, sir. But I want to be clear: Television is only one component of the socialization program. I don’t want to imply that he’s been doing nothing but soaking up Fox News.”
“What else, then?”
“He reads newspapers, sometimes. And he browses the internet.”
“It has internet access?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“You mean it browses websites? Where does it go?”
“In the last few years, I must admit, he’s been spending most of his time on what you might characterize as alt-right sites. He also posts on social media.”
“Why do we let him post?”
“It’s a two-way process,” said Kevin. “The alien needs to interact with people in order to improve his communication and socialization skills. Also, this enabled a number of side projects, such as a study into whether most people can detect that they’re engaging online with an extraterrestrial.
The president hesitated. “Did they?”
Kevin shook his head. “The alien did get banned from the New York Times comment section. But not for being an alien. For flaming.”
The president stared.
“That’s like trolling,” said the first lady. “Using inflammatory language to upset people.”
“Are you telling me that the alien was trolling in the comments section of the New York Times?”
“If you ask the alien,” Kevin said, “he was banned for posting simple facts.”
The president rubbed his face. “Careful, darling,” said the first lady. “Your hair.”
This is a disaster, he thought. He couldn’t unveil a blue white supremacist to the world. A thought occurred to him, and he turned to the Air Force chief of staff. “You said Trump didn’t like the alien? Why not? I’d have thought it might have … ”
“Appealed to a certain demographic?” offered the first lady.
“There was some talk of going public, Mr. President. Every administration has kicked around the idea of a public announcement. However, President Trump and the alien had a falling-out.”
“Of what nature?”
“A personal nature, I would say, Mr. President.”
“It insulted him?”
“Yes, sir. They insulted each other. It was very heated. After that, neither would forgive the other.”
The president shook his head. “All right. Everything you’ve been doing, it stops. No more Fox News. No more internet.”
“Mr. President,” said Kevin, appalled. “This is a long-term project. Terminating our research at this point would—”
“It’s stopped,” he said. “And, frankly, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t be arguing. You’ve turned the first visitor to Earth into a racist.”
“Mr. President, I must say, that is deeply unfair. We didn’t force it to adopt these views. On the contrary, the science team took a neutral, hands-off position, in order to allow it to develop without undue influence.”
“Into a racist,” the president said. “Who are we blaming, then? Fox?”
The Air Force chief of staff said, “In my opinion, sir, the alien is simply kind of a dick.”
The president looked at him.
“We can make allowances for the fact that he comes from a different culture. But frankly, sir, he’s not smart. And he enjoys being difficult. For example, sometimes he expels fluid. We know he can direct it into a receptacle built for purpose, but still, sometimes he does it on the floor. And he won’t say where he’s from.”
“In my opinion, sir, the alien is simply kind of adick.”
“We don’t know which planet he’s from?”
“Sir, we’re actually not sure that he knows.”
“Then why is he here? Why come to Earth?”
Kevin said, “We have several theories. He may have been kicked out by his own people, or simply gotten lost. It does seem less likely now that he is a special emissary sent here with a purpose, like we believed in the beginning.”
“That would make sense to me,” said Clara. “If he’s been rejected by his own people and, no pun intended, alienated, that may have pushed him toward extremist views.”
“It,” said the president. “Pushed ‘it.’ ”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I meant, of course.”
“Mr. President,” said the Air Force chief of staff, “I think you can see now why it would be a terrible mistake to reveal this thing to the world.”
“Ah, well, I don’t necessarily agree,” said Kevin. “As someone who’s worked closely with the alien for years, I think it’s time to share publicly what an extraordinary creature we have. I understand he has a few rough edges, politically speaking, but isn’t that, well, a reflection of society? Don’t we all value free speech even when it’s not speech we agree with?”
“Oh, please,” said the first lady.
The president looked around the group. Clara said, “Mr. President, you can’t. It would tear the country apart.”
“Whatever you decide, it’ll be the right thing to do, Mr. President,” said Damon.
“Mmm,” said the first lady.
He ran his hand through his hair. This time no one spoke. “All right,” said the president. “I’m going to fix this. Open it up.”
The metal slats cracked open. The alien had moved, the president saw; it had heaved itself closer. “Oh,” it gurgled. “Look who’s back. The president of the Jew-nited States.”
“I want to make something clear to you,” said the president. “I hold in my heart a great hope that you and I can be friends. But the views you have expressed are morally repugnant. They are grounded in ignorance and will not be tolerated.”
The alien was silent.
“Do you understand?”
“I understand you have been brainwashed by the mainstream media.”
“I am not brainwashed,” the president said. “It is you, unfortunately, who have been brainwashed.”
The alien gurgled briefly. “You’re stupid.”
“Now listen here,” he said.
“I thought you might be different. But you government people are all the same.”
“You’ve been misled, I’m sorry to say, by what you’ve been hearing. But that ends today. From now on, you’ll be given real information, from proper, well-researched sources. You’ll—”
“You’re filtering my internet?”
“—receive fact-checked, authoritative—”
“You can’t handle a debate, so you shut down the truth. So much for tolerance,” said the alien. “So much for the open marketplace of ideas. Are you a Jew? I heard you were a Jew.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“Message received, loud and clear.”
“I am the president of the United States,” he said, getting heated. “I have absolute authority over what happens to you, what is done to you—”
“Come in here and say that,” said the alien.
“I goddamn will,” the president said, stepping forward, “you goddamned piece of—”
“Mr. President!” said the first lady.
The cameras were still running, of course. He barked, “Close it!”
The metal slats began to close.
He was sweating. Damon offered a handkerchief. He accepted it gratefully and began to mop his brow. The silence stretched. “OK,” he said, mostly to himself. “OK.”
“Mr. President?” said the Air Force chief of staff.
“Bury it,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Put it away. I don’t want to hear about it ever again. I don’t want anyone to hear about it.”
The Air Force chief of staff smiled grimly. “Yes, Mr. President.”
Kevin looked between them. “But … but we can’t … ”
“Maybe we’ll get another one,” Clara said suddenly. “One alien came to Earth; maybe there’ll be another. And this time, we can handle it properly.”
“Oh, yes,” said the first lady. “That’s a terrific idea. I like that.”
“But,” said Kevin, “what if it asks what happened to the first one?”
“We’d say we don’t know what it’s talking about. Pretend it never happened.” The first lady hugged herself against the cold. “That’s all you can do sometimes, isn’t it? Put it behind you, pretend it never happened, and move on. That’s how we’ve made progress for the last 200 years: by plowing on no matter what, with a steadfast eye on the future.”
“And ignoring past mistakes,” Clara said. “Exactly.”
“You can’t fix everything,” said the first lady. “Sometimes you can only … ignore it.”
“Mr. President,” appealed Kevin. “Surely you can’t—”
He raised a hand. Kevin fell silent.
“I’m tired,” the president said. “I’d like to return to Air Force One.”
The first lady smiled. She offered her hand, and he took it. As they were walking away, he turned for a last look back, but the first lady’s grip tightened in his. “Only forward, darling,” she said, and he nodded.
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar shake hands after signing a peace agreement during a ceremony in the Qatari capital Doha on February 29, 2020.
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The United States signed a deal with the Taliban on Saturday that sets out a path to ending America’s longest war, almost two decades after the Sept. 11 attacks. The historic agreement, which was signed in the Qatari capital of Doha, lays out a path that could see American and allied forces withdraw from Afghanistan within the next 14 months. It also marks a key step in allowing President Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise to bring U.S. troops home. “If the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan live up to these commitments, we will have a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home,” President Trump said on Friday.
Under the deal, the United States would cut back the number of troops in Afghanistan from 13,000 to 8,600 over the next three to four months and the rest would withdraw in 14 months. NATO also vowed to cut back on coalition troops, decreasing to some 12,000 from the roughly 16,000 that are currently in the country. “We went in together in 2001, we are going to adjust [troop levels] together and when the time is right, we are going to leave together, but we are only going to leave when conditions are right,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (L) speaks as Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani (C) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper listen during a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul on February 29, 2020.
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The withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops would depend on the Taliban fulfilling certain key commitments, including cutting ties with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. It also marks the starting point of negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government that are set to begin March 10 and everyone warns will be difficult. “This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning. The road ahead will not be easy. Achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan will require patience and compromise among all parties,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said.
The deal was signed by U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar after more than a year of negotiations. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo witnessed the ceremony but didn’t seem to have any direct contact with anyone from the Taliban delegation. Esper, meanwhile, took part in a ceremony in Kabul with Stoltenberg and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that was held at the same time as the Doha signing. “The future of Afghanistan is for Afghans to determine,” Pompeo said. “The U.S.-Taliban deal creates the conditions for Afghans to do just that.”
(L to R) Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani attend the signing of a US-Taliban agreement in the Qatari capital Doha on February 29, 2020.
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One of the first challenges that the two sides will face is a planned prisoner exchange that is set to take place before negotiations between Afghanistan and the Taliban are scheduled to begin. The deal calls for Afghanistan to release thousands of Taliban prisoners it has in its custody in exchange for some 1,000 members of the Afghan security forces by March 10. Until now, Ghani’s government has seemed reluctant to move forward with the swap.
Although the deal has long been a key part of Trump’s foreign policy goals for his administration, some experts have warned it is risky because it would give the Taliban international legitimacy. Some Republicans have also warned of the risks of sealing a deal with the Taliban. On Thursday, a group of Republicans released a letter that warned the Taliban has “a history of extracting concessions in exchange for false assurances.”
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A young supporter of President Donald Trump cheers during a Keep America Great campaign rally at the North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston, South Carolina on Feb. 28, 2020.
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President Donald Trump called on Republicans to take part in South Carolina’s Democratic primary and vote for the candidate who would be easiest to beat but still has a real shot at the nomination. After polling the audience via cheers and clapping, Trump determined that the one who fit the bill was Sen. Bernie Sanders.
During his rally in South Carolina on Friday, Trump first expressed hope that “this is OK from a campaign finance standpoint.” He even asked South Carolina Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham for some legal advice: “Are we allowed to tell them who we would like them to vote for?” It seems Trump decided that he’d be in the clear if he conducted it as a poll. “Who would be the best candidate for us?” he asked, having made clear he was looking to identify the “weakest” contender in the Democratic field. South Carolina has an open primary system where members of any party can participate in the Democratic primary and some are urging conservatives to take part in the vote.
Trump quickly started discarding candidates. “We won’t include Steyer cause he’s a loser, he’s out,” Trump said, referring to billionaire Tom Steyer. He then proceeded to disqualify Michael Bloomberg. “Mini Mike is gone, I think he’s gone, he doesn’t have a chance … so let’s forget it,” he said. Trump also disqualified Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. “Pocahontas, we can forget about her,” Trump said of Warren. “How about Klobuchar? Not gonna happen.” That means “we’re really down to two candidates—sleepy Joe Biden or crazy Bernie.” Trump made sure the crowd understood that the question was “who the hell is easier to beat.” After a poll and a recount, Trump declared Sanders the winner.
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