Success Is When Preparation Meets Opportunity
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The day after I had my meeting with the president, a group of us went to the White House. I was still wearing my “Hail Mary” suit; it seemed appropriate for the occasion. We were led into his office. He was waiting for us in an ornate armchair.
It must have been designed by someone who wanted to make sure no one could sit comfortably in the thing. His head, neck, and shoulders stuck out over the armrest, but he didn’t seem to mind that much.
I introduced myself. There wasn’t anything else to do. The rest of our delegation came in shortly afterward: Secretary of State Denniston, Secretary of Defense DeMott, Secretary of Commerce Burdette—and President Bush himself.
The room filled up as they all filed in. After we settled down, President Bush said, “Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Ambassador… I’ve been reading your reports and listening to what you have to say. And now I’d like to ask you some questions.”
I don’t remember much about any of those questions. They may have been very interesting, or not at all; I just can’t recall them. What’s important is that I got the impression he did care and that he thought there might be something to what we said.
We stayed there almost until midnight, going over every detail, and then President Bush shook our hands personally and thanked each of us. The press corps, which had been watching from behind a window, burst into cheers when they saw him shaking hands with each of us. It was an exciting moment.
The first time any of us had ever shaken hands with the president. But none of us really believed this would change things on the ground, and I doubt any of us believed it would help in our own careers.
Afterward, we all gathered outside in the courtyard and talked for several hours about everything under heaven: the war against the Jihad, politics, the weather, baseball, music, and art. We even joked about how we were the only people alive who knew there was another world out there that could see us.
Some of them had already heard rumors of alien contact before the war, and others hadn’t; I don’t think anyone had ever mentioned it in their presence.
And then everyone took their leave and headed back toward whatever they called home. The secretary of defense, Secretary DeMott, stayed behind and asked me if I minded giving him a lift to the airport. We rode together and he explained to me that they weren’t allowed to fly privately anymore because of security reasons.
“It’s not a matter of being afraid of a terrorist attack,” he said. “If a plane goes down, you’re supposed to get off and walk.” He laughed. “Of course, we never do that either.” He smiled at me. “But if we’re not flying, they won’t let us rent planes either. You understand.”
He was right, but I couldn’t imagine why they cared so much about that.
DeMott and I parted ways in the airport parking lot, with a goodbye hug and handshake. A long, lingering goodbye hug; I remember how we held on to each other for a few seconds after he finally let go.
Then he got in his car and drove away. For weeks afterward, whenever I was driving by the airport, I’d glance around and see a black car coming out of one of the hangars and think, ‘There’s DeMott.’ He was probably doing a job somewhere on Earth.
In retrospect, I’m glad I was part of it.
A few days later I returned to New York. I stopped at the office and checked the faxes, made calls, wrote memos, answered messages, and sent e-mails. There wasn’t anything new to do; we’d done all the real work in Washington.
So I decided to take a week off. The whole city was still buzzing about the meeting, and I wanted to catch a glimpse of it for myself. So I rented a bike and rode through Greenwich Village, past Columbus Circle, down Fifth Avenue to Central Park South.
I stopped at Stuyvesant High School and looked around the courtyard. It was a beautiful sunny day, and it felt good to ride along the Hudson River. The wind was cold but it was refreshing. It reminded me of the ocean breeze, and that night I dreamed I was back in Australia.
The next morning I took the train back to Brooklyn for the weekend. I went out to Long Island and spent Saturday in Sag Harbor, walking the streets and looking at houses on Main Street. I saw a lot of people out shopping and dining.
It wasn’t like this everywhere, and it wouldn’t be for years yet, but I thought Sag Harbor showed what was possible. When I left that afternoon, a local kid walked up to me and offered to sell me a copy of The Wall Street Journal. I bought it. It was the first time I’d ever seen a copy of the Wall Street Journal on the street.
I met some friends and we played tennis. We ate seafood and drank wine, and sat at sidewalk cafes in the evening. On Sunday I rode my bike back across town to the West Side Highway and rode north until I reached the George Washington Bridge, and then rode south again until I found myself in Manhattan.
I wandered around Greenwich Village for an hour or two, then took the subway to the Port Authority bus terminal and caught a Greyhound out to Philadelphia.
I stayed in Philly for three days, drinking coffee, playing chess at cafés, walking around the University of Pennsylvania campus, visiting the Franklin Institute museum and the Barnes Collection, and generally taking a leisurely trip home to see my family.
I went to a bookstore where I picked up a copy of the Times and saw there that the war with the Jihad was now officially over, and that the United States had won.
Back on Monday morning, I went back into the office. They didn’t know anything new about the alien invasion yet; it wouldn’t be for another two weeks that the news broke and we learned that it was the Zetas we’d been fighting all these years. And then, as it turns out, I didn’t have to worry about those aliens too much longer anyway.
***
The last year is a blur, even though it feels as if it happened just yesterday. In truth, a great deal has already passed since I started writing this memoir. That’s because when I finish each chapter, I print it out and mail it to myself before moving on to another section. At the moment, I’ve only written about ten percent of the book: less than half the story.
That’s how things are supposed to happen, isn’t it? If you keep a journal, then someday, many years after your death, your heirs will find it and read about life as it was lived. Your diary will come alive again, in living color, with all the nuances and details, and emotions that no photograph can convey.
I don’t feel comfortable using a typewriter anymore. The computer keyboard is easier. But the computer screen is hard to stare at, especially for hours at a stretch. So I also use pencils and pens. Sometimes I sketch. Once in a while, I write longhand. My handwriting is getting better, but I doubt anyone would recognize what I write if they were reading it today.
This chapter is about our return from Philadelphia to the United States. This is when the war really begins, as far as I’m concerned. After Philadelphia, everything changes. A lot happens between here and there.
We flew in on a Tuesday night.
“Welcome home,” I said. “It’s good to be back.”
“Good to get away from Sydney for a while,” David said.
He looked tired. He hadn’t slept much, not on the airplane and certainly not on the plane to Newark. The other passengers had stared at him the whole way to Boston and back. They’d looked at him with open curiosity, and at me with a kind of fear that seemed to say, “There he is, the one who made it through the invasion alive, the one we’ll never see again.
Let’s make sure that none of us gets close to him either.” The press must have gotten a hold of his image somewhere – a photograph or something – because suddenly everyone knew that we were both survivors of the invasion.
“How long did you plan to stay?” I asked.
“A week,” David said. “But I could easily have extended it by another month without too many complaints. They’re happy to have me there, and I’m happy to help them figure out how best to rebuild after the war.”
“You’re a hero in Australia,” I reminded him.
He frowned, surprised. “They think so?”
“Yeah, they do. You’re the only one who got off the island safely, and you’re a hero.”
David shrugged. “Not much else I can do with it.”
After we landed, we took a cab to Grand Central Station; then we took a train north to New York. When I stepped onto the platform in Penn Station, I felt like I’d left the war behind, as if all the horrors and terror and horror had simply disappeared when we’d boarded the plane.
There were still people staring at us, and a couple of reporters trying to ask questions as we walked down Eighth Avenue toward the Waldorf-Astoria, but most of those passersby were tourists looking for souvenirs.
I wondered how long it would take for the city to forget that something terrible had happened in this place just six months earlier. I hoped it would be a long time before the memory faded completely.
I wanted to stay in New York for another day, maybe two, to relax and try to put myself back together again. We talked about going back to the hotel, but neither of us was ready to go inside yet.
The streets felt safe enough; nothing about this neighborhood screamed danger, nor did we hear gunfire or bombs. It was a normal weekday afternoon in New York, except that there was a war on the other side of town.
The only sign of anything unusual was the police presence – cops on every corner and an undercover cop car following us from block to block, until we finally lost sight of it around Times Square.
When I saw the Empire State Building in the distance, I told David that we should go up there at some point during the weekend, if not sooner. “Just look at all these people,” he said as we came into the shadow of its spire. “And there’s no one on Wall Street anymore.”
“You’re right.”
“So we can just walk in here and pick up my bag and we’re ready to roll?”
“Pretty much.”
Our reunion with the rest of our team was brief but emotional. The others greeted David with warm applause, and he smiled shyly, embarrassed. As far as I knew, we were the only people in the hotel that night, which struck me as strange since the convention center was empty now, and so were most hotels in the area.
But no one cared about that, so we sat in the lobby and drank coffee and beer and chatted with each other about the past few months.
I learned that the conference room next door had been rented out for three days straight, even though there was no need for such a space anymore. The organizers had tried to rent out the ballroom for a party, but it was already booked for something else.
The convention had moved from the Waldorf to the Javits Center downtown. The new building was twice the size, although there were rumors that some people would rather move the event somewhere else entirely, just to shake things up.
“Maybe they’ll get rid of me then,” one man joked. Everyone laughed nervously. Some delegates had decided to return home, but most had stayed because they weren’t convinced that the United States was really over.
Many people were talking about what had happened in the Midwest and Texas – a lot of speculation, but not a lot of evidence to support any of the theories. People were scared and nervous and looking for someone to blame, but none of them seemed to be taking responsibility themselves. “That’s just human nature,” one woman said.
As I listened to their conversations, I thought about how easy it would be for the world to forget that we ever fought the aliens here – and how easy it was for everyone to pretend that we’d won anyway. That’s how wars end: slowly, and quietly.
“It was good seeing you again, Paul,” one of the men said as we stood up to leave. His name tag read RAYMOND MARTINEZ. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him at first.
“I know,” I replied, suddenly remembering his face. “You met David last year at the same conference.”
Raymond nodded. “Nice to see you both.”
We went back outside to walk along the edge of the Hudson River, which had calmed down considerably since the night when the alien ships appeared in the sky above Manhattan. It was almost sunset, and the lights of New Jersey were twinkling below us now.
I pointed up to the sky, where the stars were brightening. They didn’t glow the way they used to; instead, everything had gone back to normal.
“There’s Orion,” I said.
“Orion!” David echoed. “You mean the big guy? The giant?”
I nodded, pleased that he remembered. “The hunter,” I added, smiling.
“He has three arrows, like a triangle,” he whispered excitedly.
“Three is always lucky.”
David grinned at me. “Who knows? Maybe we’re all being watched by three-armed beings in the dark.”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “But at least we’re still alive.”
“For now,” he mumbled under his breath.
A moment passed before I realized what he’d said. And I wondered what exactly it meant if anything.
***
After we got home, David spent a few weeks recovering in my parents’ basement. When we’d returned to Chicago from New York, the news reports had started coming fast and furious and we couldn’t help but feel sick watching them – and feeling so helpless.
The President’s term was supposed to last two more years until the 2020 election, but after what we’d seen happen in Michigan and Ohio, it was clear that something was badly broken in America. No one could believe that this was an isolated event, a freak thing, or a coincidence.
We all felt that we were part of something important, something terrible, and yet there was nothing we could do about it but sit and wait. Meanwhile, the media was full of people who claimed they knew what the aliens were planning for us: nuclear attacks and food shortages, and economic ruin.
None of it made sense to me. There had been no evidence that anything was going wrong, so why was anyone talking about it? Where was the proof?
I kept thinking about the night of the alien’s landing – not the night itself because there was no point in trying to recapture those events. Not the aliens themselves. I couldn’t think of anything worse than that day, but the memory of our fear had faded enough that I was starting to forget everything that had happened.
Instead, I found myself focusing on how we’d managed to survive against incredible odds. I’d heard of families with young children who had decided to take the risk and stay in their homes after the aliens arrived; others who had left for their second homes in the mountains.
A lot of people had fled to Canada – a decision I wasn’t sure I would have been brave enough to make, even with my mother and sister waiting for me across the border. But everyone did whatever they thought they could do. In the end, we were all pretty much doing the same thing; we’d learned a long time ago that nobody could do anything for us.
And so I’d come back home. And David was safe with me. I’d done what I’d promised, and it seemed like we might actually be able to live out our lives in peace, without any more nightmares. We might all have lost a little innocence, but that didn’t mean we were completely ruined.
Then there was the problem of finding another job – or even just a different kind of work. After being a journalist, it was hard to find a career that suited me, so I took a position at one of the newspapers in town. I’d never written much for a newspaper before, but I figured I’d give it a try. So far, the job hasn’t turned out to be too bad at all.
The only person I couldn’t talk to about what had happened was Paul. He hadn’t returned to the newsroom once he’d quit working as a reporter, and he refused to talk to anyone. I knew that he’d gotten fired over his affair with one of his sources, but I hadn’t asked him about it directly.
For some reason, I didn’t want to know how close he had been to get himself in real trouble with the police.
Paul’s sudden disappearance made me sad; I missed hearing from him. It also bothered me a lot that he hadn’t called me once since he left. I couldn’t stop wondering if I had offended him somehow if he’d decided I’d betrayed him by letting him go.
One afternoon, I came into work to find the newsroom in chaos. All the reporters had gathered around the computers, staring at the screens in stunned silence. On-screen was a news report, taken from the television news service. One of our own colleagues was dead.
“What is it?” I asked one of my coworkers who was watching the feed.
She looked at me blankly. “You don’t know? Well, you’ll just have to watch then.” She pressed play on the video and we saw her, looking scared and disheveled. Her hair was wet and there were tears down her cheeks. “That’s Heather!” someone shouted.
Everyone was shocked. Some of the men had put their hands on their hearts while the women stood up from their chairs, shaking and crying.
I sat back down slowly. My stomach lurched inside my body. It seemed impossible to believe that she was gone so soon after the aliens landed. The news report went on to reveal that Heather had been found floating in a canal along the Chicago River, wearing only a pair of blue jeans.
The police were still investigating the case and the authorities were warning residents to remain vigilant against the dangers of alien abduction.
We had lost a colleague. That was what mattered, but the way she had died was horrible, almost unbearable to think about. We hadn’t known her well – there were three other people in the newsroom besides us and all of them were female – but we’d all been friends with Heather. At least, I’d thought so until today. Now I couldn’t decide whether that mattered or not.
When I got back to the house, I found David in the kitchen with his laptop open, searching through the news reports.
“How many dead now?” he said when I walked in. His voice was distant; he seemed to be thinking deeply rather than speaking aloud.
“Six,” I said quietly, and we both stared at the screen in silence. There were no details yet of why these people had been killed. Had they been attacked while driving, or walking along the street? Or had they been caught outside their houses, as Heather had been?
It was all so confusing, and yet I couldn’t shake this feeling that we weren’t seeing the whole picture. Something terrible had happened that morning in Chicago.
“Let’s not watch anymore,” David said. “There isn’t going to be anything new on those feeds until tomorrow anyway.”
He closed his computer and started making dinner: roast chicken, baked potato, peas and carrots, and homemade gravy. As the meal cooked, we talked about our day together, sharing the things that had happened at work.
We laughed a bit, and I was glad for the distraction. But when we ate, the conversation felt strained between us, and I could tell David was troubled about something. I wondered if he’d heard anything from Paul.
David was quiet for a long time as we watched a movie on the television, but eventually, he broke the silence.
“I’ve been reading up on the cases. Most of them have similar patterns,” he began, and I tensed up again, ready for another lecture on how I should have stopped him from leaving when I’d had the chance. Instead, I relaxed when he went on, “They’re mostly women and they’re always alone – either they lived alone or their families are away somewhere else.
They’re not attacked, but the aliens take them and then bring them back again.”
“Are you sure?” I asked carefully. “It can’t be the same aliens every time, surely.”
“The police haven’t found any evidence to suggest that. And they don’t seem to be abducting anyone else at the moment. This is only a guess, but maybe the aliens are taking people from a specific area and then bringing them back, over and over again?” He sounded tired suddenly and I realized that it must have been hard for him to get out of bed today.
“So where do these creatures live?” I asked. “Is there anywhere they go to eat their victims – some kind of feeding station like the aliens who attacked your parents did?” I knew David was too stubborn to admit it, but part of him had been convinced that they’d come to Earth from that place, although now that we had seen the aliens, I didn’t think there could be such a connection.
David shook his head sadly. “No. No one has ever reported seeing them, except at these abductions. I mean… they could be living in some sort of underground cavern. Maybe they’re building up here in Chicago; the city seems to be their headquarters. Who knows? There are no records of alien settlements in North America, so this could be the first discovery we’ve made about them.”
After we’d eaten, I suggested we try to find an internet connection to see if we could discover more about what was happening. I knew David wanted to know everything we possibly could about the aliens. I was curious myself, but even though Paul’s message might give us some answers about the attack on my parents, I wasn’t sure what we would do with it once we had read it.
The End