Code GCzero22…n

by

Peter Cowlam

Michael Whelan, Conference in the Clouds

The meeting broke up shortly after five, and I still did not know what I could and could not say. As I pulled from the parking lot the sun, a dazzle in my windshield, had touched the summit of the distant Mt Naganui. Its snowy peak was a momentary gold corona. The guard at the gate, with a brush of fingertips to his temple – that was the standard salute – nodded me through, and lifted the bar. I drove to the foot of the mountain, then up its winding road, a metalled way that soon gave out where the gravel began. 

An orange haze settled itself and was quickly absorbed into the shadow of mountain ferns, palms and pines, that whole vista precipitate as I looked from the edge of the trail, where in places the barrier had broken. I refixed my gaze on the track ahead, with little sense of its safety, and motored on in that cloak of darkness. That tense monotony was broken only when I met a lone car coming down, its headlights bobbing towards me. It killed its beam as it passed, edging slowly, tentatively round. I dipped my headlights likewise. Then I was truly alone, upwards into the wilds of Naganui’s mountain bush – rockfalls to the nearside, a dizzying gorge to the other. I hugged the inside curve.

But I got there, up near the summit, where it was cloudy, starless. I circled round and began my descent to the mountain’s other side. At that point I thought a lone star had come out, low on the horizon, in hue a gem-like silvery magenta, bright against the sooty backdrop of the night sky. The thing got bigger as I approached, showing itself gradually as not a heavenly body, but a machine with rotating lights – silver, magenta, in a regular beat and pattern – little points of spinning strobes – mesmeric. 

I got within thirty metres and knew it as a UAP, static above the track. It cast a cone of tawny reddish light on the gravel and surrounding vegetation. In that shimmer and corrugation of unnatural light I made out a figure, in the dazzle of the suit it wore – again, a silvery magenta. It was Homo sapiens-like, striding towards my car, where I had stopped, with the engine running – a gentle purr. As it got closer, a looming, ghostly, other-worldly being, my engine spontaneously cut. The electrics went haywire. The lights dimmed before they extinguished completely. The radio crackled, and fell silent. The figure – more cyborg than organic – came up nonchalantly and stood menacingly at my driver door. Slowly, deliberately, it extended one of six digits on the hook of its hand and touched my window, miraculously activating enough of the car’s electrics that the window wound down. The thing had difficulty speaking English. ‘You will go,’ it said, and then, in a series of staccato instructions, with great effort described a beach residence not far distant. There I would find one of the country’s former premiers and deliver a simple code – a string of alphanumerics, too long to reproduce here, but in shorthand GCzero22…n. 

I protested. What did it mean? And why me? I was a roving reporter, trying to keep intact my blog behind a paywall – not more than a hack really, who owed his living to Grub Street. Nevertheless, I had a reputation for the fantastic twist I gave to my stories, which always proved credible. This presence at my window seemed to know all about that, perhaps telepathically aware that I had come to this attractive island nation looking for a scoop. I considered that no Western authority would ever believe, as I believed, that Naganui was on the brink of manoeuvring itself into a brokerage for peace. Did it not have a lesson to teach the warring militias of the north? In fact did it not have something to say to all of us slave to the world’s warmongers? The answer was probably yes, though by now much had unravelled, and had not gone as planned. The premier here was about to lose the election, and had learned a lesson from us, from the West, and threatened a coup. I had soon discovered that in fear of retribution no one in Naganui wanted to talk politics, so I had failed with the story I’d come for. Except now I had this cyborg, with the hook of its hand gripping my doorframe. Again, it had difficulty speaking, with its robotic, clanking voice—

‘The ex-premier…’ it stuttered.

 

I worked out, with careful, close attention, that those of a distant star had observed how politicians here on planet Earth were able to speak sense only after retiring from politics, when the rhetoric of party loyalty – or key to career advancement – was no longer necessary. My mission was to approach Naganui’s previous and now ex-premier, Esala Lau, and deliver what the cyborg said was the GC code Lau would have carried with him during his time in office. Perilously, this was the only sequence to bring about a de-escalation, and put a stop to the coming nuclear exchange. It was madness, yes, but the outcome hinged on General Rockefeller Blitts, who controlled and filtered all intelligence in the north’s grabs and counter land grabs, his theatre of manouvres. Blitts had already hinted to his president and commander in chief that a nuclear first strike was his only viable option. In all probability, preparations were already under way. Code GCzero22…n – a sequence known to only three persons on the planet – constituted the one countermanding instruction, the one vital piece of information whose utterance would prevent a global conflagration. 

‘You must contact Mr Esala Lau. He is to make the presidential phone call. He knows the number. He knows the GC code.’ The world would burn without his intervention.

‘How will I know this – what is it – this beach property?’ I asked.

I wasn’t to fret. My satnav had been reset, I was told. Vicarious as my authority was, I could be sure of its recognition in relating that GC code to Naganui’s former leader. That’s all I had to do. The cyborg ambled back to its craft, where in a blinding light it levitated, with a jerking motion, up to a door that slid open. That UAP as it hung in the sky increased the repetition of its lights – silver, magenta – and in an instant disappeared, leaving behind a patch of blackened gravel, and a withering of bronzed pines and palm fronds. My engine restarted. The lights came up. The satnav spoke, resetting its destination. I drove. I careered along a stretch of shoreline, where the beach had been fenced off and put into private hands. Across the drive of my intended address was an iron gate, between two enormous marble pillars, each inscribed with an initial: a G, a C. The gate was locked. I spoke into the intercom, and got for reply a slurred voice, background laughter, the chink of glasses, other voices, a party going on, a hint of roaring surf, and saw in the distance a well-lit glass and timber chalet. I explained my errand. ‘No gatecrashers,’ I was told. This was a private party, and the intercom went dead. I buzzed and buzzed. No reply. I stepped back, and saw on the whole north horizon a terrific flash of silver and magenta, and a mushroom cloud as that took shape.

About the Author:  Peter Cowlam is a poet and novelist. He has won the Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction twice, most recently in 2018 for his novel New King Palmers, which is at the intersection of old, crumbling empires and new, digital agglomerates. His latest novel, That Was Hugo Blythe MP, published earlier this year, is a satire on English politics and political life. His latest collection of poems, Ghosts in the Machine, brings together original poems in English alongside their translations into Italian, translations by Angela D’Ambra. His novella, A Forgotten Poet, has been produced as an audiobook, narrated by the noted operatic baritone and voice actor Charles Johnston. Peter Cowlam is the Literary Editor at Ars Notoria (aneditions.com).