"Executive Decision" by Ricardo Garcia

  “I still can hardly believe it,” the President said, his voice a whisper quite unlike the booming display of self-confidence people had heard the week before at his inaugural speech.

  Dr.  Edwards took off his glasses, out of habit inspected them for a virtually non existent dust. He looked up. “I wouldn’t know, sir—in a sense, I guess we should have expected it. Or something like it, at the very least.” Absently he rubbed his nose with what in other circumstances would have qualified as enthusiasm. “As a kid, the thought used to keep me awake at night, no joke.”  

  “Some childhood. I suppose I had it easier myself—we in mine only played being Them, me and my friends.”

  “What can I say.” The President’s science advisor placed his glasses back on their perch, gave a weak smile. “Conceivably we had a tad too many books around the house.”

  “Well, now that I have seen this—this thing, I can almost guarantee it won’t be easy for me to get a wink tonight either.” The President nodded to himself. “So They were here. And we never knew, for crying out loud. All these decades and we never knew.” He waved a finger.  “Do you think this was the only time we have been, uh, visited, doctor?”

  “Hard to tell, Mr. President. My gut feeling is, no, probably not. But it’s no more than my humble personal opinion. I might be wrong. I don’t know. We don’t know. If you want to argue the point, think of all those legends throughout the ages—tales of strange creatures seen around that didn’t seem to be of this world. Weird people found in weird circumstances, like they were stranded on the Earth. Or the Dogū figurines right there in Japan; to a lot of people they look like aliens all right. Something might be behind those stories. Or not. We couldn’t say, either way.” Dr. Edwards spread out his hands. “This is the only case we can tell for sure They must have been here—well, make it ninety-nine and as many decimal places as you like percent sure, if you will, if we’re ready to bet our reputations this is genuine alien technology.”  

 “Any chance we can duplicate that? I mean, get to know how it works, and maybe build a gadget of our own?”

  “Wish I could give you an answer, Mr. President. We simply have no clue how it does what it does. Mind you, it was just a lucky happenstance that somebody pointed a laser at it. An accident, how about that.  And then again, it wasn’t until last month that we even knew this—contraption—existed at all. Had it not been for the fact the present owner knew somebody who knew somebody else who works at DARPA, we’d never have found out about it.”

  “I trust the present owner of this thing is the United States government.”

  “I stand corrected, Mr. President. The former owner has been, uh, compensated. And, ah, informed of the need for his discretion.”

  “That soldier who brought it to the States—did he get to see the rest of the machine?”

  “Not to our knowledge, sir.  I guess he just wanted a souvenir; those markings are rather beautiful. I mean, if they’re markings and not a language, as is our bet. Well, and it also fits in a pocket. Convenient when trying to smuggle something. Family lore has it the scrap dealer who sold it to him had hinted at the existence of a wreck somewhere in the outskirts of town—some sort of plane, with bodies inside. But after the initial talk, the dealer never showed up again.”

  “His must have been a cutthroat business, in the wake of the war.”

  “I’d dare say in more than one sense, sir. And anyway Private Simmons got transferred a few days later.” The science adviser shrugged. “But yes; here and here, see?” His finger pointed at a couple places in the photos. “Notice the shape, this section that looks like it was chopped off. It all would seem to suggest the whole thing was attached to something else. Like it was a part of something bigger.”

   There ensued am awkward silence. Then Dr. Edwards went on in earnest. “See here, Mr. President, even if we never get to find any other pieces, or remains of their bodies—and I’m ready to admit there seems very little chance we will, after all this time—this is the most important scientific issue of all times. This beats Einstein, or Darwin, or Copernicus, say. Not just that now we know for a fact that antigravity is possible, even if are going to have to come up with some sort of mumbo-jumbo theory to explain what we have seen. Mind you, sir, even if we couldn’t duplicate this—this gadget—in centuries, the mere knowledge that it is at all possible would shake science like you wouldn’t believe.

  “And even that pales in comparison to the other, more important, piece of knowledge—the fact that we are not alone. That there are others, out there. Other civilizations. Other worlds full of life, of intelligence; that have set out to explore this universe of ours.” Edwards paused for breath, then blurted. “I—I’d say the world deserves to know, sir.”

  The President stood up from his chair, took a couple steps toward the wall, turned around. His was the look of a man carrying an unbearable load on his shoulders. “Deserve—yes, I’d be inclined to agree with you.” He added quietly, “But can the world afford to know?” And Dr. Edwards knew without a doubt he wasn’t meaning any scientific or even theological crises.

  “My own take is, sir, they had a malfunction and crash-landed. Talk about bad timing.”

  “Bad timing indeed. Though they might not have been the only ones, come to that.” The President sighed. “Poor Truman thought he was making a decision—he never knew he was actually making two at the same time.” He shook his head. “In a world that should be called Water instead of Earth, They had to crash-land—on Hiroshima, of all places.”

-The End-

About the Author: 

Ricardo L. Garcia (Havana, 1955) is one of the authors belonging to what many regard as the Golden Age of science fiction in his country of birth, Cuba, back in the 80s. A former Assistant Professor of English, his work has appeared in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Galician, Bulgarian, and Esperanto.