Reason To Fear (The Earthburst Saga Book 5) by Craig A. Falconer

Author:Craig A. Falconer [Falconer, Craig A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-24T23:00:00+00:00

27

It’s been a whirlwind of a day.

Necessity and urgency have been driving us forward all along, and that’s truer now more than ever.

Before we leave Sasha’s office and end our three-way call with Phil on Earth and Major and Simone on the Vita, President Williams steps forward to make sure everyone is clear on their role in what has to be done.

Williams is a natural leader and has an effortless authority, which is no surprise given the level of office he ascended to. He’s also very good at staying calm and engendering a similar state in others, even when situations are hardly conducive to it.

Harriet is going to work on preparing a new message to send to the aliens, as soon as possible after the gateway is open. We can’t afford to think in terms of if rather than when, so no one is talking in hypotheticals. Similarly, we simply have to expect that near-instant communication will be possible once the wormhole is activated.

Simone’s role is the most obvious, if not the most straightforward. She has to synthesize something as close as possible to the material shown in the alien message, which we’re somewhat ironically calling neocite.

Williams encourages Shaun to bring together a launch team here on the Balena, to develop a workable plan to fire the neocite at the location in space the message has pointed to.

Sasha’s immediate task, meanwhile, will be leading a team in analyzing that location with the full power of the new PFOA telescopes at their disposal. They’ll keep an eye on the Leak, too, because the fact that the radiation leakage is accelerating gives us real cause for concern.

The rest of us here, Williams says, should concern ourselves with ensuring a harmonious atmosphere that allows the others to do their specific and crucial jobs.

“We’re in a bubble in this room,” he says, exhaling deeply. “Out there, when people see this news, they’re going to have the same negative thoughts some of us did. The big difference is, we’ve had each other. When something made me uneasy, the rest of you eased my mind. When Simone had hesitations about the neocite, we did the same for her. That’s not going to be true when everyone else sees what we just have, let alone when they hear what we’re planning to do.”

In my peripheral vision, I see Chester nodding. He’s our expert on how news is received and also the best ways to deliver it, and he’s already proven himself very adept on that front. I’ll give his views a lot of weight, just as I will with those of President Williams.

“That’s even truer on Earth,” Williams says. “We’ll have the fear-selling media to contend with as soon as anyone picks up on the AI prompts Phil has used and the data he’s fed in. We’ll have irresponsible corporations going out of their way to make this all seem as scary and as dangerous as they can. The good thing is that our operations are all up here, insulated from any drama on the surface, but we do have to be ready for pushback.

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