“Sir, he instructed me to tell you he would call just as soon as he can. He can’t talk right now. I’m sorry Mr. President but I can’t make him come to the phone.”
“Incredible. And he knows it’s the President?”
“Yes sir. I made it quite clear several times that it was you personally on the line, Sir” he said.
“Well. This is quite interesting. All right, I’ll be interested in hearing what he has to say when he does have the time,” President Sampson said and hung up.
He was furious. No one under his command was going to put off talking to him. Who in the hell did he think he was? Did he feel that he was above the President? It was simply unacceptable. He called the Secretary of Defense back, “Craig, I want you to meet me at the White House as soon as we land.”
“Yes sir. I checked your position a few minutes ago and they say you are about fifty minutes from the airport. Adding another twenty for the helo, would make it about 11:45 a.m. I’ll be there,” he said.
The President went back to his seat. What had started out as a lovely day was quickly turning into a day full of potential conflict. He read the telex once more and then tossed it on the stack. General Devin was not going to tell the President of the United States that he was too busy to talk to him. There were going to be some significant changes made.
Devin had too much unchecked power and that was about to come to a screeching halt. The nation’s secrets are important but it was far too dangerous to let one man have total control.
“General, the President is hopping mad,” the Major told him.
“I don’t give a damn if he is. He will just have to get over it. I have a job to do and that’s my priority now. You just take care of getting the retractions in the media. I don’t want anyone to report it as an experimental secret project. This was nothing more than a new type of European fighter that was on loan. It is not experimental; they have been around for years. This one just happened to be modified for test results. Got it?”
“Yes sir, but it has already gotten out. It’s in the papers already,”
“I don’t give a good goddamn. Deny the source. Tell them they are full of crap,” he said.
“Yes sir, but it’s going to be a hard sell. Too many people got to see it before the area was secured.”
“I didn’t ask you to whine did I? I said fix it, and that’s what I mean. Take care of it. Whatever you have to do. I want anyone that says differently taken care of.”
“How?”
“Are you in charge of Media Relations or not major? When I say taken care of, I mean do whatever you have to do. Get this out of the news and all other media. Take care of it major or else I will have someone else replace you. Does that make it clear enough?”
“Yes sir.”
“Now get out of my sight and do your job,” Devin snarled. He immediately turned his attention back to the loading of the main section of the craft.
“Get some tarps or something over that piece you dumbasses,” he yelled to the men struggling with the fuselage.
“Come on, get with it, I don’t want this to take all day,” he yelled at them.
The men redoubled their efforts. You did not want to be singled out by General Devin or get on his shit list. Five hours later, most of the larger pieces of the craft had been removed and were on their way to Area-51. A team stayed behind to recover as many of the smaller pieces as possible. Now all he had to do was get the President off his back.
George Snapp sat with Lake and Barnett. It was the second time they had met as a group at the same location.
“Dr. Barnett, were you experimenting with splicing the alien’s DNA with human DNA?”
“In a roundabout way, I suppose that would be accurate. At first we just wanted to find a way to stop J’s cell degeneration. We must have tried a hundred different avenues but nothing would work. Somewhere along the line trying to combine human and alien DNA became one of our goals.”
“But why? Why would you want to do that?”
“Two reasons. If we could isolate the gene that would allow cells to regenerate, we could change the life expectancy of everyone on earth. The second, and most important in my mind, was that when we finally figure out how to bend time, humans will be exposed to all sorts of different environments. If they had the alien DNA genes incorporated into them, they would stand a much better chance of survival.”
“Wouldn’t extending the life expectancy cause even further overpopulation?”
“Well, maybe for a while, but once we started space exploration, we could start whole colonies on other worlds,” Barnett replied.
“And you really believe that?”
“I do.”
“I think you have been out of the real world too long doctor. People aren’t going to just pack up and leave. Earth is their home.”
“When the food supply starts to run out, they’ll go,” he said.
“Doctor Lake, do you buy this?”
“I haven’t really thought about it that much. I was just working on how to make the damn ship fly the way it is supposed to,” Lake answered.
