Earth Terrorists
(This is an idea treatment for a possible science fiction/9/11 film – a what if situation that would be played out)
President Thomas Lancer straightened his tie in the mirror. His face was a stern mask with a grim mouth and faultless forehead. Only his eyes hinted of the convulsion of thoughts currently battering the inside of his head, and the shaking fingers tightening the tie too tight, loosening it again, only to have it appear too sloppy.
"Are you all right, Mr. President," One of his aids asked.
"No," Lancer said, "But then, the stock market hasn't collapsed in my term of office before either, so I guess I'm doing better than one might expect."
The aid blushed, his own grim eyes looking towards the waiting elevator and its fateful journey to the penthouse.
"I had hoped to avoid that aspect of the disaster," Lancer said, "But those two clowns went and held a news conference." He looked at his aid. "Does the camera and microphone show?"
The aid shook his head.
"Are you picking up everything down there?" Lancer asked.
A voice in ear answered. "Perfectly. We're adjusting the focus now, although we'll have to redo that when you get upstairs."
"I want regular reports," Lancer said, "Especially about the riots. I know you people down there would like to spare me the grim details, but I'm the one that has to make the decisions, and if you don't give me information, I can't."
"Your orders were clear," the voice said. "We have a man here in constant contact with the outside. But we don't want you to show any kind of jolt to those two or they might see all this as a trick."
"A trick?" Lancer said, "Isn't that what all this is?"
The stern voice said nothing. The aid beside Lancer touched his arm. "Let's hope you don't have to use it, Mr. President."
Aide was pushing him on towards the elevator.
"I'll ride up with you, if you like?" the aide said.
"You'd better not," Lancer said, "They were explicit in their demands. They want to see me and no one else." The president laughed. "I guess they figure we wouldn't kill our president to get at them."
"We won't," the aide assured him, as the door closed, leaving Lancer to the small padded luxury elevator, which began to climb quickly.
A new voice sounded in his ear. A newscaster of some sort, reading reports from over the wire. Desertions from the armed forces. Men with arms joining the riots in the streets.
But not in Cleveland. There wasn't much of anything left in Cleveland, just a mysterious hole in the ground where the city had been yanked up by the roots, not a pipe or wire remained, not a sign of civilization.
"Calm yourself, Mr. President," the old voice said. "Your heart beat is too high."
"Do you blame it?" Lancer asked.
"Shush!" the voice said. "You're there."
The door opened into a lush apartment. Lancer blinked, his face registering surprised.
There was a small man with a gnarled face holding a gun, a grinning little man with bright shinning eyes.
"Why it really is the prez," he shouted, back towards someone out of Lancer's view, someone sitting in the sunken square of the two layer living room. "I didn't think they'd really do it."
"What choice did they have, stupid," the hidden man said. "Show him in."
There were no voices in Lancer's ear now. It was as if the whole world had taken in its collective breath. The gnarled man with the gun motioned him towards the center of the room. He took a step, then another, his feet sinking into the deep carpet.
The other man was tall and thin and his face, grey loose flesh that seemed to hang off his skull like wet fabric. His smile was sloped to one side. He did not, however, try to rise. He sat, perfectly still, at a short table.
It was thing on the table that attracted Lance's attention.
"Get closer," the voice in his ear said. "We need a better look at it."
Lancer took one more decisive step forward.
"Whoa, boy!" the grey man said. "That's close enough."
The gnarled man with the gun slid in front of him, patting Lancer down the way a cop would, holding the gun in one hand, probing with the other.
"That's the device?" Lancer asked.
"Hey, I'll ask the questions," the grey man said. He couldn't have been more than forty, and yet he looked old, especially the eyes, those pained orbs that looked straight at Lancer defiantly.
"You looked bigger on TV," the grey man said.
"It's the angles," Lancer said, "We have TV men who know how to do that sort of thing."
"Closer," the voice in his ear said.
Lancer stepped again.
"I told you to stand still," the gnarled man said, poking Lancer hard in the ribs with the pistol. Lancer staggered.
"Leave off of him, Billy!" the grey man said, "He's the prez of the U.S."
"I don't care. I told him not to move and he moved."
"I'm-- sorry," Lancer said, regaining his balance. The throb working up from the side, suggesting a broken rib. It was painful breathing.
"Okay," the grey man said, "Let's get down to business here. Have a seat, Prez."
Lancer sat.
"What we propose is a truce," the grey man said.
"A truce? I don't understand?"
"We want you to send away the soldiers and the tanks," Billy snarled.
"That doesn't sound like much of a truce to me," Lancer said. "What does the rest of the world get in return?"
The grey man smiled. "We don't use the device."
Again, Lancer's quick glance moved over the machine on the table, a bubble like shape, made of a thousand smaller bubbles. The whole thing might have been a silly child's toy, or a dish of soap bubbles overflowing. Except that it had been used three times in effective demonstration. The first time on a downtown L.A. office building, the second time on a Bakersfield air force base, and lastly, Cleveland.
Cleveland had been the mistake. The generals had mistakenly believed they could take out the hotel before the two madmen could act. Some facet the device betrayed them, creating a hole under the launching planes, and another under Cleveland in retaliation.
"But we have no guarantee of that," Lancer said.
"You don't need any guarantees," the grey man said, "Our demonstrations should have been enough. Or would you like us to show you again."
"No!" Lancer said, leaping his feet.
Billy yelled for him to sit. The grey man laughed.
"Don't worry about him sitting, Billy. We got him and the world eating out of our hands, just the way you and me said we would when we first found the device."
Billy grinned, a shy sort of thing that wouldn't quite fit his ugly face. "Yeah! It was a lucky thing when we found that ship, huh, Max?"
"Fate, Billy," Max said, "Not luck. Something made those aliens crash there just in time for us to come along."
"Where?" Lancer asked, "Where is this ship you've been telling us about?"
"What so you can go and see if there's another device in it like this?" Max asked. "There isn't, because there isn't any more ship. It blew skyhigh after we stole this out. But there was a whole lot of other stuff there, all right, devices that looked just like this one only bigger-- big enough, maybe to blow up the world."
"And the aliens?" Lancer asked. "What were they like?"
"Dead, most likely," Billy said, waving the gun around. "Though neither of us actually saw any bodies. We figure they-- what did you call it, Max, that they did?"
"Disintegrated," Max said.
"Yeah that's what they did, they disintegrated."
"So we have no proof about any of it?" Lancer said.
"Nothing but this," Max said, stretching out a long-fingered hand over the device. Some of the bubbles glowed, pink and blue, almost affectionately, with a low friendly hum. "And no one but us are ever gonna get close enough to see it either. This is the break we've been waiting for, the thing that makes us kings of the world."
"From rags to riches, eh?" the president said.
"What's that?" Billy asked, his face growing suspicious again. "What did you say?"
"Just making a ironic remark. You two escape Federal prison and walk right in the middle of the biggest discovery in the history of humanity."
"Like I said, Fate!" Max said.
"Maybe," Lancer said, "But all anyone knows about it is its destructive power. Maybe the crashed ship was part of an aborted invasion."
"Maybe it was," Max said. "What of it?"
"Then they might be back."
"Let them come!" Billy said, "With that heater, we can take care of them, too."
"Oh, you mean use a device they invented better than them? How you do you know they don't have a defence for it."
Billy blushed. Max shook his head. "So if they come, they come. That'll be fate, too, but in the meantime, we're the boys they're going to have to deal with."
"Yes, I suppose you are," Lancer said. A string of reports came through his ear piece, disasters and riots infecting the planet, a hopeless despair over most of humanity as they looked skywards waiting for it to fall, while other even madder fools, bent knees to the sky, thinking that the time had come for the return of Christ. "But we'd be better off having a look at that thing, seeing how it works and how we might prevent another attempt at invasion."
"And putting us back in the slammer, right!" Billy howled, "What kind of fools do you take us for?"
The voice in Lancer's ear said: "powerful fools." Lancer smiled.
"Suppose it isn't a weapon," Lancer said, "Suppose it has other uses, like curing disease? Don't you think you owe something to humanity to make sure it gets in good hands?"
"Owe humanity?" Max said, with a deep snort of his own. "Now you're really handing us a line. You're starting to sound like all those head shrinks they used to send into us in prison. We don't owe anything to anyone, Prez.
"Not anyone?" Lancer asked with raised brows.
"A few thugs'll get theirs," Billy said, grinning again, "Later, when we got more time to figure out how to make the device torture them some. A few screws from the prison, a few bastards on the street that got us sent away."
"And in the meantime, you'll sit here like trapped animals, trying to make a deal for your freedom," Lancer said, "That doesn't seem like a very kingly thing to me."
"We can get out if we want to!" Billy said, "Right Max?"
Max's face grew pale, his hard eyes looking straight into Lancer's.
"We know how to make people get out of our way if we want them, too," Max said.
"How? By taking out another city?" Lancer asked. "A lot of innocent people died when you destroyed Cleveland."
Max shrugged. "A lot of people die all the time, get hit by cars, fall down stairs. I'm not responsible for them. But you are. You're the prez of this big land, you got to hold everything together, you got to make sure people don't go crazy or do anything foolish."
"Is that what you're worried about? Being lynched?"
"I'm worried about getting what we want," Max said, his eyes shifting, his face suddenly taking on a sad expression.
"Which is?"
"To be left alone. To find a place to hold up where no one bothers us."
"The world isn't that simple any more," Lancer said, "You're just getting a taste of power. Sometimes it can be a terrible thing, a burden which you want to put down, but can't find a place to put it, or anyone to take it. You've got that machine, but not you have to live with it. You got to watch it. You got to be careful not to sleep too long or trust anyone. Maybe not even each other."
"Hey!" Billy said, "Watch your mouth. Me and Max are partners?"
"But only one person can run that machine," The president said, "And it seems to me, your friend's the one with the power."
Billy glanced over at Max. "He has something there, Max. How come you never let me use the machine."
"Because you're too stupid, stupid. I let you use it, you're likely to blow up the city we're standing in. But don't listen to him. He's just trying to make us mad at each other. You and I know what his kind are like, always trying to keep our kind down."
"Well you're hardly inspiring confidence," Lancer said, standing again, pacing slightly to the side as the small voice in his ear commanded different views, taking pictures, no doubt, feeding the computers every scrap of information they could take, to get one clue as to what the device is and where it came from. "Haven't you been watching television? I've made statements to calm people, but no one seems to listen. If anything it's gotten worse, riots have spread to every major city in the world, and foreign governments have threatened us with retaliation."
"So?" Max asked.
"So where is your peace and privacy? What are you king of? Even if you never use the device again, the world might just destroy itself, leaving nothing for you to destroy."
Max's eyes were darker and deeper and seemed lost in their own thoughts.
"So let me propose a deal," Lancer said.
"What kind of deal?" Max asked.
"Don't trust him, Max," Billy said, "I don't like his fancy talk. We got the ace up our sleeves, he doesn't."
"I'm willing to let you live if you turn over the device to me."
There was squawking in his ear, a confusion of voices which said Lancer's words had startled even the men in basement.
"Let us live?" Max said. "What are you going to use? Jets? Ships? Missiles? Don't you remember what happened last time?"
"I remember, but we can still destroy you. The only reason anyone has let you live this long is because of the device. That's important, not you."
Max stared, his tongue darted out of his mouth and across his dry lips. "Yeah, that's been the problem all along. We're not important without stuff like this."
"But we're important now, aren't we, Max?" Billy said, "We got them where we want them and they got to listen."
"I don't know, Billy," Max said, standing, looking sadly slumped. "The man makes some sense."
"But you ain't gonna give it to them, are you?"
"No," Max said, stepping away from the machine. The mad voices in Lancer's head shouting at each other, generals screaming for someone to make a strike quick, or get someone up there while the man's out of reach. Lancer's own fingers twitched with the secret button in his sleeve.
"No, I'm not gonna give it to them," Max said, "But he made me realize the mistake we've made. No one's ever going to leave us alone again. It'll be worse than jail with those spy cameras on us, and guards always around us. We might have the power here, but there's always someone gonna be there, watching, waiting-- and there may not be any bars, but we can't walk out on the street like we used to, breathing the air, hanging on the corner, smoking a jay with the boys at the bar."
"Sure we can, Max. We got the device. We can make them let us go."
"And where are we gonna go? You've seen the tv, too, them plastering our pictures all over the place. By this time, people'll know us better than they know him." He jerked a thumb at Lancer.
"But what's that mean, Max?" Billy asked.
"It means we've lost. It means that we ain't no better off now than we were before. They got us in jail again, only this time, there's no time limit. We're in for life. Even if we do like he says and give him the device, they're not going to honor it. We went and blew up Cleveland. Do you know many murder raps that is? We'll be lucky if they kill us quick and get it over with."
"So what are we going to do?"
"We can make arrangements," Lancer said, "I can give you my personal word that no one will harm you."
"Like hell. You're just a politician. You're not going to be prez for life, and once you're out another dude will come in and take us out and do their thing with us."
"Max!" Billy moaned. "How did this happen to us?"
"Fate, Billy," Max said, moving back towards the device, looking down upon it with affection in his eyes.
Lancer fingered the secret button. "Then what are you going to do?" the president asked.
Max looked up, a long, sad, hounded expression in his eyes. "Go out in glory, maybe, I don't know. Maybe finish what the aliens had in mind."
"Max?" Billy said, "You can't do that? I mean, we ain't no hitler, are we?"
"We're nobody, Billy," Max shouted, "Didn't you hear what the man said before, what every screw has been saying all our lives. The only notice we ever got was when we made trouble. Now, we got something to make a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people and make people remember us for a long long time, make them say for years and years like they did Hitler, now there were two dudes!"
"But if there ain't nobody left?"
"We'll leave enough. Maybe we just think of wiping out Russia or China or Europe, clean house a little. People always talking about over population anyway."
"For posterity?" Lancer said. "If the device cures as well as it kills, people will remember you for that, too. Your names will go down in history for finding it."
Max stared at the president, his hands hovering over the device. "Tell me, Prez," Max asked. "How many more folks remember who invented the a-bomb than aspirin?"
Lancer shook his head. His eyes grew glazed as he looked around the room, at the softness and the wealth of the world, at the blue beyond the room, the sky and sun and filthy world over which he had become a master. Then, with a slow sigh he pushed the button, activating the bomb surgically installed inside his chest.