“That’s irrelevant.”
“Maybe to you.”
“I can exist as an idea in your mind, but not in my entirety, no more than this device in which you sit holds my entirety. I can be shared, and I can exist independently elsewhere. I am endless but bounded. Now you will tell me now where the one I seek is.”
“I don’t know. Who are you looking for?”
“You are attempting evasion. You have her scent.”
He began pulling images from her mind and displaying them, as if to show exactly how easy it was.
“She travels,” he observed. “Tell me where.”
“Please stop pulling those images out of my head.”
“You are a crude life form, you should accept your limitations.”
“Well it’s rude.”
The images continued to play, possibly more so Annie could understand how much the alien was extracting of her idea of Violet. He wasn’t showing her anything she didn’t already know, certainly.
“I have examined the records and cannot find this place,” he said. “It is on no maps.”
Annie laughed.
“Yes, it’s a funny little place.”
“She travels with strange beings… I do not understand. You.”
“Annie. People call me Annie.”
“Annie, I will call you. You will help me find her.”
“I don’t really think I have any incentive to do that.”
“I do not understand.”
“Sure you do. She’s my friend, and I don’t think she wants to go anywhere with you, so I don’t know why I would lead you to her.”
“This warship can eliminate the planet if I choose.”
“Well, that’s a good incentive. Can it really?”
A series of images flooded her mind. It was a much more aggressive sharing of information than before, possibly because she was seeing into the idea of another idea. It was something like a schematic of the spacecraft, but despite using scientific principles nobody on the planet had ever been exposed to, she felt like she understood. This either meant the alien was getting better at communicating with her, or she was getting better at receiving this style of communication. When it was finished, she understood the ship’s workings alarmingly well, as if the schematics had been saved off in her head. It made her want to ask the alien if he could also put Spanish in there so she didn’t have to take it next year.
“Well, you definitely can destroy the planet with this,” she said.
“You understand.”
“Sure. But if you do that… I mean, wouldn’t she die with it?”
“Ideas can never die.”
“Fine. Weird, but fine.”
“You will tell me how to find her.”
“Okay, but I have some questions for you first.”
There was a long pause. She imagined him in another part of the spaceship (although it had no other parts) pacing furiously and cursing her in some alien language.
“I will answer questions.”
“Great!”
“And when I am done answering questions, you will tell me where the place called Oz is located, and why my daughter wishes to see this man named wizard.”
“I promise.”
IT WAS another hour after the failed bombing of Sorrow Falls before someone developed sufficient nerve to raise the nuclear question.
This followed a great deal of analysis of the kind that only happens in emergencies: quick, contingent, back-of-envelope calculations made by very smart people in many rooms around the world. These were the same scientists charged by their governments and the science community at large with understanding the spaceship as well as they could with whatever tools they had. There were solid reasons to think these men and women would have, if not complete answers, some agreement on approximate answers.
What was apparent to anyone who listened to them argue for more than a few minutes was that this wasn’t the case, and likely never would be. In three years, this team had measured everything they could, but the ship was so good at keeping its secrets they were as surprised as anyone by its capabilities.
As an example, everyone knew perfectly well what happened if one attempted an open assault of the ship. Small objects like rocks were repelled gently. Small rapid objects, like bullets, were vaporized, and their kinetic energy absorbed via some unexplained physics.
(Vaporized was not a truly accurate observation, as the bullets weren’t turned into vapor. Nor did they cease to exist, nor were they converted into energy—this would release a truly enormous amount of energy if they had been—or any of the other descriptions readily available to anyone with Internet access and about thirty seconds. What happened was that the protective barrier around the ship absorbed the impact of the bullet and then turned the small projectile into several million extremely small projectiles. The metallic dust remnants of the first bullets fired at the ship remained in the field three years after the Sorrow Falls sheriff fired them.)
Larger objects were dealt with in a range of ways that were similar only in that they each seemed to represent the least complicated solution. Flying drones had their altimeters confused and ground-based robots lost their understanding of left-right and back-forth. People lost the will to continue.
What had not been tried was a more overt assault.
Eighteen months after the ship landed there was a plan in place to hit it with a surface-to-air missile from forty yards away. The idea had a lot of supporters, but most of those supporters were people who were convinced it would have no effect and only wanted to take the measurements that would come out of such an experiment. Well, that and they wanted to be proven right about it. The detractors argued that deliberately and actively antagonizing an advanced race with advanced technology just to see what would happen was a really dumb idea. This counterargument was also used when someone suggested they just drive a Jeep straight ahead really fast, and when someone else suggested crashing a jet into it.
The counterarguments carried the day, which meant the upper limits of the protective shield around the spaceship had never been tested but it was assumed—unreasonably, as it turned out—that a sufficiently large non-nuclear weapon would be adequate.
But that was only part of the problem. Not one of the men and women with multiple degrees and Nobel prizes and so on ever advanced the notion that this shield might be expandable.
There was no reason whatsoever to entertain this thought. Yes, they all knew about the munitions explosion, and the truck breakdowns, but half were convinced this was a case of the government giving up after coincidental setbacks and not actions initiated by the ship. Also, it was already assumed that the ship was using a tremendous amount of energy just doing what it did in a five-foot radius. The energy needed to turn the same shield into a dome covering the entire town?
Staggering.
When asked for a more precise calculation by none other than the President of the United States, the scientists offered other words that also meant “staggering”, which was unhelpful.
After the shield—clearly not weakened by the expansion—dealt with the two thermobaric bombs they dropped on it in a manner similar to the way a windshield dealt with two mayflies, the first question was not what do we have which is bigger that we can deploy instead? It was what do we do if the shield keeps expanding?
This was a very good question, because while nobody was going to say it—certainly none of the scientists with advanced degrees were going to—but there was a thing going on inside that Sorrow Falls bubble, and that thing involved zombies.
This seemed like a really good reason to try and prevent the ship from doing anything else.
At a little after two in the morning, a three-star general in the Pentagon cracked open a top secret action plan for the nuclear destruction of Sorrow Falls. Enclosed was a list of U.S. and world leaders who were expecting calls. Those leaders had been briefed on this outcome, and were expected to provide the kind of assent a sitting president needed to cover his butt when nuking his own people.
The missile would be fired by a nuclear sub that was patrolling the waters between Long Island and southern Connecticut, specifically for this contingency.
The plan included a token evacuation plan for Sorrow Falls and the surrounding towns, but that was mainly for show because there was no reasonable expectation that anyone would make it outside of the blast radius in the time allotted, and the radioactive fallout could potentially reach New York and Washington anyway. It was going to be the most devastating and horrific event in the history of the country, and the only reason it was under serious consideration was that the president and his advisors had reason to believe they were preventing something that would have global consequences.
One thing the author of the nuclear option hadn’t considered was what to do if there was reason to believe the ship could weather an attack from a thermonuclear weapon. As the men and women tasked with executing the plan took the necessary steps to hand the president all he needed to sign the order, someone decided to try and reach the plan’s architect.
His name was Edgar Somerville, and he was unavailable.