00: Blips

April 4, 2049 AD, 17:50 Eastern Standard time

Junior Radar Specialist Sam Grierson had a problem. A big problem, from such a tiny source. A blip had appeared on his radar screen; another nail in the already nearly sealed coffin of his career. It was just about the worst thing that could have happened to him at that very moment, so one can forgive him for not knowing quite what to do about it.

He had been chewed out four times in as many months because of similar blips, and the actions he had taken because of them. The first time had been an honest mistake, when he had woken up every ranking air-force officer on the eastern seaboard in response to the threatening shadow of an incoming piece of space debris entering the atmosphere. According to his calculations the object had just about the right shape and size for an enemy missile – the New Korean Union finally gone over the edge – again! At least that is what he had convinced himself when he picked up the phone to dial the personal assistant of the President of the United States of North America. Fortunately for the USNA (though UN-fortunately for Specialist Grierson), it had turned out not to be a missile at all, but a five-hundred thousand dollar lawn-chair discarded by an astronaut on the International Strategic Space Station sometime in 2015. Specialist Grierson was always forgetting to double-check his calculations.

Of course, that was not the last time Sam Grierson had been burned by an American astronaut. The next blip was much larger than the first, and clearly made out of high-grade alloys – the kind one might find in a Japanese space assault bomber on the final leg of an attack against North American soil. This time, Sam had actually managed to call the bedside phone of the President, himself, who was not at all happy to find out later than the image on the radar had actually been that of a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit jettisoned as a prank by a satellite maintenance crew in the late ‘30’s. A formal enquiry had been called to investigate how a trained radar specialist could make such a massive error, and a formal reprimand was entered into his record.

And then there had been blip number three, which had resulted in what was, in Sam’s estimation, the biggest debacle of his entire life up to that point. He was positive this time, that he had identified a meteor the size of Vancouver Island on a collision course with central Montanna. If left unchecked it would hit in no more than two weeks and likely disrupt the planet’s solar orbit enough to completely destroy all life. On Grierson’s advice, the USNA launched a battery of high-yield nuclear fusion missiles to destroy the object, and destroy it they did. Except that the meter turned to actually be a time capsule launched into space in 1982, and several decades worth of valuable history went up like a hundred Hiroshimas. Grierson had been bust down to the Junior Specialist after that, and told, in no uncertain terms, that any more screw-ups would mean the end of any hope he might have of salvaging his already precariously tottering career.

Sam was hopeless when it came to high-pressure situations; why he had ever been assigned to safeguarding national defense as a radar specialist detecting objects incoming from space was as big a mystery to him as to anyone. He had signed on to the air-force's special information services sector hoping for a cushy desk job of little to no significance, not this!

But none of that would change the fact that there was a blip glowing on his radar screen that wasn't going away. And a mere ten minutes before the end of his duty shift, at that. His calculations said that this was no lawn chair or twentieth-century automobile; in fact, according to his calculations – which had been checked and re-checked a dozen times – it was not of Earthly origin. Thermal scans indicated intelligent construction out of a number of completely alien elemental alloys, and an energy signature unlike anything humans had ever produced.

All the more reason not to say anything, thought Sam. And sure enough, if he had announced the arrival of some extra-terrestrial intelligence and got the entire world into a panic about it, the repercussions when it turned out to be discarded screw-driver or space-toilet would be severe, to say the least. No, he was going to be smart about things, this time, and keep an eye on the thing for awhile before he went to his superiors. Doing a quick mental calculation, Sam confirmed the object would not enter the atmosphere for at least fifteen hours; that was more than enough time to get some sleep after his shift and be back at his station in case it was still there in the morning. Thing might be a little more clear after some sleep, as well, and he would have more than enough time to issue a warning and alert the necessary people.

There was only one problem with his little plan: his shift was ending in less than ten minutes, and whoever took over for him would certainly see the object, as well as the logs of Sam's observation of it and subsequent failure to report such. If the object turned out to be a threat, that would look very bad for the recently demoted junior specialist. With decisive intensity, he called up the radar protocols and used higher-level access codes he had bought to hide the object's signature and erase all records of the sighting.

Confident that no one would ever be the wiser, he watched the object until the end of his shift, then wandered off to bed once Senior Specialist McGuffin relieved him, setting his alarm to wake him in plenty of time to intercept the object before his calculations had determined it would pose any threat to Earth.

As usual, Junior Specialist Grierson's calculations needed rechecking, and also as usual, he slept through his alarm.