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EVEN THE VAST majority of aliens on Picklock Lane were unaware that Sogguth, a spy within the Universe Council, was constantly in communication with the command centre of Sheriff Fatty Millstone. Hidden deep within his tenement, the clandestine centre was a hive of most-secret activities that was kept out of the line-of-sight of the public. The highest levels of government were, of course, well informed about the work of the small cell devoted to mining the priceless intelligence from special agent Sogguth, but that treasure trove of data was limited in its distribution to the Prime Minister and his amanuensis. The command centre’s need-to-know was restricted to Fatty, his clone-watch-standers and his closest associates—trusted people like his wife Dr Sarah Millstone and the Prbzt couple.
None amongst the inner circle of those ‘in the know’ could conceive of a circumstance that would justify expanding the established intelligence distribution protocols—until Sogguth’s information about the Universe Council’s dispatching a space battle group whose closely guarded mission was to voyage to Earth on a search-and-destroy mission. According to the extremely sketchy details about this highly classified mission, an ancient alien robotic Earth mining operation had autonomously sprung to life after aeons of slumber in Antarctica under a mile-deep layer of ice near the South Pole. Sogguth’s warning was simple: Earth’s military armed forces should allow the alien destruction operation to proceed as planned since any attempt to interdict it would be considered an act of war—a war Earth could not win and would eventuate in the total destruction of the planet.
Naturally, once he understood what was happening, the sheriff raised the alarm with the PM through his amanuensis, and Sir Douglas hastened to the command centre for a briefing and recommendations. Meanwhile, the amanuensis arrived with classified intelligence indicating the Big Power governments of Earth were aware that the alien robotic mining operation was coming to life under the polar ice, and their military forces were converging on the South Pole to stake their claims to the ore and tailings from the mines. In fact, the Earth’s participants in this ‘gold rush’ were unaware of the Universe Council’s operation now underway. As Sogguth painted the current picture, all combatants obstructing the Council’s intentions would be annihilated forthwith by the superior invaders.
Fatty and his PM were joined in the command centre by Dr Sarah Millstone, Dr Ibngort Prbzt and Mrs Prbzt to analyse the situation, and they agreed they would have to break their established protocols to divulge what they knew as no one could pose an alternative under the urgent circumstances. So the question became not whether, but to whom and how they would make their disclosure. Sarah had the clearest idea about what to do: after clearing contact through royal channels, they should establish virtual communication with the President of the USA directly to explain what was happening and suggest that the US negotiate a withdrawal from the South Pole area by all parties who were gathering around Antarctica to seize the ‘untold riches’ harboured beneath the ice.
The king immediately understood what was happening, and he encouraged the PM to make virtual contact with the American President on a channel he had established in advance for just such emergencies as this one. So the king, the PM and the President were all online when Sheriff Millstone dropped the intelligence bombshells in rapid succession. There was no time for shilly-shallying, so the king told the President he should make no mention of the background for the intelligence sharing. As Sir Douglas put it, ‘You, Sir, must come up with a rationale quickly but not involving your national security apparatus in countermeasures. If you require personal assistance, I can fly an expert witness in Dr Ibngort Prbzt, anywhere you like for face-to-face consultations.’ The American thanked the PM for his courtesy, but he said he had a ready-made idea that would not require the personal services the PM offered.
In fact, the American propaganda machine was quick to respond to their President’s suggestion that the current situation in Antarctica might yield World War III, a devastating global nuclear exchange, if the major powers did not stand down from their military deployments at once and agree to meet at a Summit to discuss the apportionment of riches, if any, discovered in Antarctica. Taking the lead in the hostile forces’ withdrawal, the US called back its own troops and observed while the other powers followed suit.
In this most secret arrangement, not a word about alien involvement was mentioned. The advertised summit began the next day in Switzerland. The attention of the world was therefore focused for weeks on the division of future Antarctic spoils and not on the aftermath of the withdrawals near the South Pole where two weeks later unidentified flying objects laid waste to the ice covering the southernmost landmass and, incidentally, destroyed the aeons-old robotic mining operation. As none of the so-called advanced nations had the means to monitor or even observe what was happening on the ice-bound continent, the melting caused by the advanced alien weapons was attributed by way of disinformation to Global Warming and not to alien pre-emptive military activities.
The effects of the alien attack were monitored by the World Council, and Sogguth relayed the battle-damage reports to Sheriff Millstone’s command centre. The imagery of absolute destruction was subsequently relayed to the American president by order of the king to ‘close the loop’ for America’s having helped to save the planet. The two rulers agreed to share a single-malt scotch whiskey at some unspecified future time when they would ‘open their kimonos’ and talk about specific details, like sources and methods of the intelligence indications and warnings. Of course, the time of that revelation would never come, so the alien operation passed without raising suspicions among the frenzied global media organisations.
Further intelligence from Sogguth continued to illuminate the motives the Universe Council had for destroying the robotic mining operation on Earth. For example, one faction in the Universe Council felt the revelation of long-term robotic mining would raise too many questions about the periodic alien presence on Earth. By obliterating any evidence of the aliens’ presence, they would not upset the painstaking progress the Universe Council had made integrating aliens with humans on the Blue Planet.
Five weeks after the alien mission had successfully ended, Sheriff Millstone was distraught to discover that the newshound Lance Crenshaw published a fantastical story about aliens who visited Earth on many occasions to plunder the planet’s mineral resources. Over a pint, the sheriff asked the card-carrying member of the yellow press where he got the material for his fiction about alien visitations.
‘Come now, Sheriff. Play fair. You have your sources and I have mine. My story about the aliens was labelled a fiction, so what is the harm? Believe me, I got more fan mail for that one story than for most of my real-news features for the last year.’
The sheriff was sceptical, but he allowed Crenshaw ‘a pass’ rather than arresting him and so drawing attention to the story as if it were factual. No matter how Millstone looked at the apparently harmless fiction, he could see no way the newshound could have used knowledge of the most secret alien operation at the South Pole to develop his story.
On a hunch after seeing the sheriff’s interest, Crenshaw did lateral research on the Internet and discovered the high volume of articles about incidences of possible alien visits to Earth. When he began asking questions about his findings, he became connected to a reclusive Russian conspiracy theorist named Dmitri Volganov and arranged an interview.
‘Dmitri, I am researching alien visitations to Earth for my newspaper. You have been recommended to me as a fellow researcher in this field. Without having you recap what you have found, I will go straight for my objective—a story about recent alien visitation that suggests a prolonged series of alien penetrations of Earth’s atmosphere.’
Dmitri laughed and looked around as if he were afraid to be heard about dangerous matters. ‘I have a friend in Russian special forces. He was sent to Antarctica to find evidence of alien mining operations there. When he arrived on that continent, he and his team were attacked by UFOs. My friend was the only one of the team who escaped alive. The others all perished near the South Pole.’
‘Can you give me the names of the people on your friend’s team? Better yet, can you tell me where your friend is right now?’
Dmitri smiled and chuckled. ‘My friend is in a cell at Lefortovo Prison. If you want to interview him, you will have to act quickly, as he is going to be moved to one of the new gulags.’
‘I thought those ended when the Cold War stopped.’
‘What fairy tales have you been reading? Things in Russia never change. Anyway, you asked for a story. If you can find my friend, he’ll give you a more recent account than you will find anywhere else.’
Crenshaw did not hesitate to take transportation to Moscow, but when he arrived at Lefortovo Prison, he was informed Volganov’s friend had died of wounds received in battle. Crenshaw asked to see the friend’s last cell, the one in which he had died. When he was escorted to the cell, he saw the maintenance personnel tidying up the walls of the cell. The two men were covering the drawings that had been painted on the wall, apparently in blood.
‘Excuse me, but do you recall the drawings that used to cover these walls before you painted over them?’
The older of the two workmen shook his head, but his much younger assistant winked and showed him Polaroid photos.
‘How much do you want for those photos?’ Crenshaw asked the man in broken Russian.
‘Twenty-five roubles for all five images.’
Crenshaw could not believe his luck. For almost nothing, he had bought priceless pictures of the wall drawings of UFOs attacking Earth. He could see that the writing on the walls told the story of a recent, destructive invasion by aliens, apparently near the South Pole. The UFOs were targeting what appeared to be earth-moving machines.
Afraid his cache of photos would be confiscated, the reporter fled the country, glad to have more than he needed for a story, which would be Pulitzer Prize material. Crenshaw wrote his story and turned it in to his editor, but the old man only laughed. ‘Crenshaw, it looks as if you have fallen for the oldest trick in the book. You don’t know who took these pictures or who made the drawings on the cell walls. Your story reads like fantasy. We aren’t going to win a Pulitzer though I suspect if I printed it, we would certainly win the Booby prize for false news stories.’
Crenshaw was disgusted by his editor’s response. What he could not know was that the man had made a call to Sheriff Millstone describing the contents of Crenshaw’s story, after which he annotated it with this kill notice: ‘Not for Publication or Syndication.’ The fact that nothing was known publicly about the sources for the ill-fated news story was positive, not negative. That is, the government did not think it necessary to follow up with legal action against any individual or organisation under the Official Secrets Act.
Eventually, Crenshaw’s proscribed copy and its ancillary notes became the property of Sheriff Millstone’s private ‘Collection of Curiosities,’ which was housed in a locked case in the command centre along with the host of classified materials appertaining to the official (but highly classified) accounts of the destruction of the alien mining operations at the South Pole.
Millstone bore no grudges and harboured no guilt about Crenshaw’s disappointment about this and many other incidents in his journalistic career. Occasionally, the sheriff teased the reporter about his futile trip to Moscow, but the newshound never guessed the source for his spike in this case was the man who often sat across the table from him with a pint of bitter. |
