The Visitor by Tony Harmsworth

Author:Tony Harmsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harmsworth.net

21 Allen Meets the World

Suddenly news began to leak, perhaps based upon the strange secret meeting of the heads of space agencies and top government ministers in Paris.

Some of the tabloid newspapers, mainly those often called The Gutter Press began to speculate wildly. Stories quickly emerged that a planetoid had been discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system and it was on a collision-course with Earth. Another was that the sun was turning nova. The most common story was that a UFO had been captured. Even prestigious news media like The Times in London and The Washington Post were speculating like crazy.

All of my fears about not drip-feeding the discoveries, were coming home to roost. At one point, the Home Secretary actually apologised to me, because she’d been one of the strongest influences on the Prime Minister about maintaining secrecy. The problem was that there was no point in me being right in retrospect. We were having to deal with the repercussions here and now. I finally convinced our government, ESA, and JAXA that we needed to get the true story out quickly. Roscosmos even threatened to do their own release if the USA didn’t change its attitude pretty damn quick.

It took several trips to Houston, the Ames Research Center, and Washington to get the head of NASA to agree that telling the world was best presented in a single thirty-minute prime time programme. During the last visit, I had a rough video to show how the story could be delivered in around twenty-two minutes, allowing time for the head of state to introduce and sum up.

My main arguments against a piecemeal release were the almost certain leaks of the image and the fragmentation itself. Once the first announcement was made, people would quickly lose interest in the future instalments and all our manipulation to try to prevent hatred of Allen before we revealed him would be wasted. This was the first time people would have the opportunity to prevent prejudice before it became endemic – I was determined not to miss the opportunity. My drip-feed idea had been the best, but this was the most sensible alternative with that not having been adopted.

Advertising agencies I’d commissioned for advice said that fewer than one in five would watch all transmitted episodes. The majority would have missed the important information and formulated their view of him from his looks alone. Exactly what we needed to avoid.

Finally, Michael Sanderson agreed with me. He deliberately waited until the Secretary of State was out of the country, and he got approval from the President. Michael was worried about doing this, but my arguments had been sufficiently convincing he was prepared to risk the downside on his own position. The delays, however, did nothing to quell the media’s suspicions. Their stories were increasingly slanted towards the capture of an alien spaceship, which, frankly, was too near the truth for comfort.

When we went out for dinner in the evening, I managed to get Michael to open up a little about the relationship between the Secretary of State and NASA.

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