The Ghost Inside, Part 5
"No, it's not a joke, Jacob," Rebecca said, sounding frustrated, as she talked on the phone. "Why would I do that?... Just tell me what you found?... Uh huh.... uh huh... ok, just give me the bottom line, ok?... Seriously?... What's the chance there was an error in the test?... Ok. This is good. Thanks!" She hung up the phone and started typing notes into her computer.
Over the past week, she'd borrowed some of the government-issued antibiotic pills from several of her friends from all over the area. She then gave those pills to her friend Jacob, a chemist, to analyze them. He found out that all of the pills were the same. And that they were all essentially sugar pills. All they had in them were basic vitamins and minerals. There was no antiviral agent in them at all.
On a whim, she opened her top desk drawer where she kept a lot of her work junk. She dug through it until she found a pill bottle with several pills left in it. It was an antibiotic that she took a few years ago for a urinary tract infection. The government had said that those pills didn't work in the end... that they may appear to work, but that the virus would just come back stronger. She thought about it for a moment, then decided to give them a try.
Several days passed, with her dutifully taking the antibiotic pills twice a day. She was surprised to find that her fever broke... and that she was back to normal again. And it lasted for a week before she started feeling sick again.
*****
"You're serious," Frank said. He was the editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune, in charge of what stories went into the paper every day and where it was located. "You want to run with this?"
"Yes, I do," Rebecca said, pacing. "This is huge, Frank."
"Come on. I can't print this, Rebecca," he said, putting the stack of printed pages on his desk. "This is just like one of those conspiracies. Take this to the Enquirer or something."
"Frank, you can't be serious. I'm uncovering the biggest story of the last century and you want to bury it?"
Frank looked at her, thinking. "You have your evidence, yes? And I mean rock-solid proof."
Rebecca nodded. "Yes! All of it."
"Heaven help us if you're wrong," he said, slowly shaking his head. "You'll ruin us."
Rebecca nodded, hopeful that she'd convinced him. "I'm not wrong."
"Ok, ok," he relented, raising his hands in surrender. "Front page, lead story... today."
Rebecca unceremoniously grabbed and hugged him, then ran out of his office. "You won't be sorry Frank!"
"Yeah, yeah..." he whispered, smiling.
*****
At 5:00pm, the phone rang at Rebecca's desk. "Rebecca Stanley," she said answering the phone. She was working on a follow-up story to her original, trying to connect more dots. Trying to figure out how the asteroid strike fit into all of this.
"Miss Stanley, my name is Peter Caston and I'm the Chief of Staff at the White House," the man said with a southern accent.
That got her attention and she stopped typing. "Hi Mr. Caston, how are you today? What can I do for you?"
"Well, uh, the President has asked to speak with you... personally."
"With me?" she asked, surprised. "I'm not sure... my schedule is a bit full..."
"Miss Stanley, please," he said. "We both know how important this is. We've already booked you a flight. It leaves in an hour. Please... he just wants to talk to you." Peter hung up the phone.
Rebecca sat with the phone to her ear for another minute before she realized it had been disconnected, then put it on the cradle. She went into Franks office.
"I just got a call from the White House," she said. "They want to talk. The plane leaves in an hour."
Frank looked at her, a bit shocked. "Give me all your notes and I'll make copies."
Rebecca nodded, then turned to leave.
"And Rebecca..." he called to stop her a moment. "Be careful." He obviously felt scared for her.
She nodded.
Four hours later and Rebecca was being escorted into the Oval Office of the White House. She'd been brought in through the front, her presence not being hidden at all, which made her feel far more comfortable. With all the casual reporters taking pictures all the time, the security cameras there, and the multitude of people using that entrance, she had plenty of witnesses.
"Miss Stanley," the President said, standing up from behind his desk to shake her hand. "Please take a seat. Can we get you anything? Water? Coffee?"
Rebecca shook her head. "No, I'm good." Several Secret Service agents and several of the President's aides stayed in the office, standing behind her.
The President sat back down at his desk again, folding his hands in front of him. He was smiling, slightly. A politician's smile.
"What can I do for you, Mr. President?" she asked.
The President grabbed a copy of the Chicago Tribune from his desk and unfolded it, looking at the front page. He turned it to show her. "It's about your story."
"You liked that did you?"
"Miss Stanley," he said, putting the paper back down on his desk. "It's probably one of your best. But that story is going to cause a lot of problems. Not only for the U.S. government, but governments around the world. You know that, don't you?"
She smiled at him. "So you admit it's true?"
He smiled at her, intentionally not answering her question. "I was thinking I'd tell you a story. Would you like that?" Rebecca nodded. "I tell stories to my grandkids now and then.
"Let's say... it begins ten years ago. NASA calls up the President of the United States and tells him that an alien spaceship has gone into orbit above the earth. After the initial shock of 'we're not alone in the universe' the President orders NASA to make contact with them. And they do. And they find out that these aliens aren't making a friendly visit at all. In fact, they want to take over the earth.
"Now, of course the President doesn't take this sitting down and decides to strike first. He launches a nuclear strike against them, showing them we won't go easily. But it failed... completely. And let's say these... aliens... then strike the earth killing two point eight million people in one strike.
"Further discussions of other actions ensue, but the aliens keep in contact and decide on a more peaceful settlement. Instead of striking us again and again and making billions of people die and suffer needlessly, they offer us the ability to live out the remainder of our lives in peace. The human race would just... slowly fade away.
"Let's say further that the major world leaders agree to this course of action, but keep plans in place if things change. For its side of the deal, the U.S. creates a virus that helps an alien virus survive within our bodies. It raises our body temperature just enough for it. It had to be worldwide... and to keep the populace from panicking, pills were created to convince them that they were fighting against the pandemic. The alien virus, itself, causes no harm. It simply keeps us from having babies... keeps future generations from ever being created.
"So, the governments of the world have colluded to the extermination of the human race in an effort to keep us from dying horribly painful deaths due to a war we cannot win."
"Sounds like a nice story," Rebecca said, amazed that he was telling her this. "You should write a children's book."
"Frankly, Miss Stanley, I'm hoping you'll write that story," the President said. "We'll even provide you access to all the evidence you need. It'll be the biggest story in history."
"You want me to write that?"
The President nodded. "It is the truth. However, there is just one catch."
"Uh huh... there usually is."
"You see, after they entered orbit, we started watching them... carefully. And after they struck Brasilia, we noticed a change in their power output. Since then, we noticed that their power output has been dwindling over the past ten years. So, about six months ago, we changed the orbit of one of our weather satellites and put it on a collision course with the alien vessel. It struck the vessel, of course causing no damage. But... they didn't destroy it... and their shield, the shield that prevented our nuclear missiles from striking it, didn't stop it.
"Intrigued, NASA has been studying them even more. And we believe that the aliens no longer have the capacity to strike us like they did ten years ago. We believe they don't even have the ability to protect their ship any longer. In short... they're bluffing. They hope that our fear will continue to cause our extermination without them having to do anything more."
"And?" Rebecca asked.
"And... we're going to put one of those old plans that we made ten years ago back in play. We're going to hit them and hit them hard."
Rebecca thought about what that meant for a moment.
"There are two possible outcomes from this," the President continued. "Either their ship is destroyed and the earth can be restored... or they repel our attack and then attack back as they describe, giving us hell on earth. Either way, Miss Stanley, I'm going to give you the story so that everyone knows what we did here today and why. It's time we brought this to light. It's time we brought this to a close."
"And if we destroy them?"
"Then the earth will recover. As you might have noticed over the past ten years, the House and the Senate have had a large turnover in their membership. Politicians who were complicit in our plans decided they didn't want to be responsible any more and decided to walk away from government. I was not the President at the time and didn't make the decisions, but I've been responsible for keeping the decisions in place. So, for my part in this, I will not run for re-election."
Rebecca understood. When this came to light, no one was going to trust the government that lied to them. "What do you think will happen if they strike again?"
"As a movie once said when a large asteroid was going to hit earth, 'An impact equivalent to ten thousand nuclear weapons detonating simultaneously. One hundred trillion tons of dirt and rock hurled into the atmosphere. A blanket of dust the sun is powerless to penetrate. For five thousand years our world is robbed of light as a nuclear winter falls. In that darkness, a civilization is removed from existence.'"
*****
