364: Chapter 364 Extraterrestrial Civilization?

The Situation Room.

On the big screen was a Twitter video.

The video was shot in portrait mode, the image shaking violently; it looked like the person filming was running.

Most of the frame consisted of the tops of buildings and a patch of blue sky.

In the middle of the sky.

There was something.

That thing occupied a massive area in the frame.

And its shape was very clear—a flat, shuttle-like form, dark gray, with symmetrical ends.

No wings, no tail fins, no visible propulsion Systems of any kind.

It hovered above the Washington Monument, motionless.

The person filming was shouting:

"Oh—shit—God, what—what is this thing—"

"Did Russia attack? Someone help us!"

"Did you see that—my God—is that an alien?"

In the scrolling bar below the video, the timestamp showed: Posted fourteen minutes ago.

Retweets: 1.2 million.

In the Situation Room.

The President sat at the head of the table in his bathrobe. He had only gone to sleep at 3:00 AM that morning and had been dragged out of bed by his aide fifteen minutes ago. He hadn't even had time to put on a suit and was still wearing lion-print pajamas.

The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the CIA Director, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)—a dozen or so people stood in front of the screen.

The face of the NORAD commander was pale.

Twenty minutes ago, he had been sitting in a conference room on the third floor of the E-Ring, explaining to a young man just how impenetrable the USA's homeland air defense network was.

Now, an unidentified flying object had appeared on his screen.

"Damn it, what on earth is going on? Connect me to the Air Defense Center, ask them what the hell they are doing; it's flown right to our doorstep, and they still haven't detected it!"

Meanwhile, inside the mountain in Colorado, the Air Defense Command Center had checked the radar signals over Washington three times.

The conclusion each time was the same:

Above Washington, there were no unidentified objects.

All radar displays showed clear blue skies.

But the video of the unidentified flying object on Twitter had already reached over three million retweets.

FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all cut to live coverage simultaneously.

In the live footage, a reporter on the streets of Washington was filming upwards—in the shot, a huge, dark gray, flat object was hovering about two kilometers above the The White House.

The reporter's voice was shaking.

"—I repeat, this is not an airplane, not a balloon, not any known aircraft—"

"—We don't know where it came from, we don't know what it's doing, we don't know what it is—"

"—NORAD has issued no warnings—"

"—It just, it just appeared—"

The President rested his hands on the table.

He stared at the screen for thirty seconds.

Then he turned his head to look at the NORAD commander.

"Damn it, you're telling me that your radar didn't detect this ghost of a thing that's as big as thirty basketball courts?"

The NORAD commander's throat bobbed.

"Yes, Mr. President, we did not detect it."

The room was silent for a few seconds.

The Secretary of Defense cleared his throat.

"Mr. President," he said, "I think—we may need to consider a possibility that we haven't seriously considered before."

Everyone's gaze turned towards him.

"What possibility?" the President asked.

"Alien civilization."

When those four words were spoken, the air in the Situation Room seemed to freeze.

The Secretary of State frowned, but did not interrupt.

The Secretary of Defense took half a step forward and pointed at the screen.

"Please look at several characteristics of this thing. First, its size. The estimated length is over six hundred meters; this size exceeds any aircraft currently in service or under development by humanity—including our most classified projects. Second, its method of hovering. No wings, no rotors, no visible jets. This does not conform to any aerodynamics or propulsion principles known to us. Third—"

He paused.

"—It fooled NORAD. The System we have inside the mountain in Colorado, which we spent hundreds of billions of dollars building over the past sixty years, can track any metal object from low Earth orbit down to treetop altitude. It is telling us now that the sky over Washington is empty."

He looked at the President.

"And a civilization capable of doing these three things is not from this planet."

No one spoke in the Situation Room.

The CIA Director looked down at his hands.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stared at the dark gray shadow on the screen, his Adam's apple bobbing.

The Secretary of State spoke slowly: "If that is indeed the case—they chose Washington, chose to be two kilometers from the The White House, chose to appear in broad daylight, and chose not to use any weapons against us—"

"Is this a gesture of goodwill toward us?" the Secretary of Defense continued. "Are they looking to establish contact, or perhaps establish cooperation?"

Hearing the Secretary of Defense's words, everyone present relaxed.

The Secretary of State was the first to react.

"If it is about establishing contact, then their choice of Washington makes sense," he said. "Not Moscow, not Beijing, not London, not Tokyo. But Washington. This in itself is a statement—they acknowledge who the dominant civilization on this planet is, and they know who to talk to."

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nodded.

"From a military perspective, this posture is also restrained," he said. "A six-hundred-meter hull, parked next to the The White House for a full—" he glanced at the clock on the wall, "—nineteen minutes, with no aggressive actions, no weapon Systems activated. If it wanted to attack, Washington might already be gone. It didn't attack, which means the other party is rational and can be communicated with."

The CIA Director looked up.

"That means we might be the first—" he weighed his words carefully, "—civilization to be chosen."

The words "to be chosen" echoed softly in the Situation Room.

No one contradicted him.

The President's expression softened for the first time.

He pulled a cigarette from his bathrobe pocket, and his aide immediately handed him a lighter. He lit it and took a deep drag.

"Go on," he said.

The Secretary of Defense was encouraged by this "go on" and took another half-step forward.

"Mr. President, if this is a diplomatic-level contact, we need to do three things immediately. First, prepare a reception team, including linguists, mathematicians, physicists, and preferably a few theologians—we don't know how they communicate. Second, issue a notice to global allies, clarifying that this contact is led by the USA and that no other country is to interfere. Third—"

He lowered his voice.

"—We need to consider the technology transfer that the other party might bring."

The words "technology transfer" landed on the table in the Situation Room like a piece of candy.

The CIA Director's eyes lit up.

"If they are willing to share anti-gravity technology, even just the basic principles, we could widen the generational gap with Daxia back to over a hundred years," he said. "The strategic advantage we lost over the past six months because of those mechs could be regained overnight."

"It's not just anti-gravity," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff continued. "If they were able to fool NORAD, it means they have mastered some kind of stealth technology that we completely fail to understand. If this technology were to enter our weapon Systems—"

He didn't finish, but everyone present knew what the second half of the sentence was.

"So the key question is," the Secretary of State brought the topic back, "what do we have to exchange with them?"

The room fell silent again.

This was a practical question. An interstellar civilization capable of piloting a six-hundred-meter ship past the strongest radar network on Earth—what would they want to take from a small blue planet?

"Earth's resources," the Secretary of Defense suggested tentatively. "Rare earths, fresh water, maybe biological samples—"

"They could get those themselves; perhaps they don't need to talk to us," the CIA Director shook his head.

"Culture," the Secretary of State said. "Art, music, literature. A higher civilization might be interested in us lower civilizations."

"Oh, shut up. Don't call us a lower civilization," the President interrupted him.

The Secretary of State immediately shut up.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought for a moment and said, "Maybe people."

Several people turned their gaze toward him.

"I mean," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explained, "they might want to set up a station on Earth. They need partners like us."

"Partners." The President repeated the word.

He stubbed his cigarette out in the crystal ashtray on the table.

"Then let them choose us, set the station in the USA, and choose us, the USA, as their partners."

After he finished this sentence, the people in the Situation Room exchanged glances.

The leadership of the contact between Blue Star and the alien civilization must remain in the hands of the USA.

Just then, a voice rang out from the corner.

"Excuse me—"

It was that young man, the one the NORAD commander had been explaining the homeland air defense network to earlier.

"Sir, may I ask a question?"

The Secretary of Defense was in high spirits and was a bit displeased at being interrupted.

"Speak."

The young man swallowed.

"Is it possible that this ship was built by Daxia? I remember a briefing from a while ago mentioned that their military budget has been rising a bit fast over the last two years."

The room was silent for two seconds, and then the entire room burst into laughter.