The Future Planning Committee

Back in the car, Gordon breathed a sigh of relief. Not a single strand of hair was out of place, despite the extreme weather warning. His inauguration speech had gone perfectly, as he knew it would. He’d been practising since he was ten. Whilst gazing contentedly out the window, he became vaguely aware of a voice next to him.

“Fantastic speech as always, Mr President,” the address hit like ecstasy. “Obviously, you have a copy of the itinerary for your first day, but the briefing team would like to know if there’s anything in particular, you’d like to focus on?”

“How about the American people?” He flashed his aide a winning smile. She returned it, albeit a little strained.

“Quite right Mr President.” She paused. “Although I think they mean policy areas.”

“I see.” Gordon glanced at the speech in front of him. “In that case, I suppose my priorities are hope, progress, and the future. An America for everybody.” His jaw tensed as he gazed pensively into the middle distance.

“Marvellous, I’ll write that down,” muttered Amy, making little effort to do so. “As you can see from the itinerary, your first engagement is with the Future Planning Committee. We have set aside three hours for this.” Gordon blinked.

“The Future Planning Committee? What on Earth is that?”

“Sorry, I don’t know.”

“Well can’t you ask the transition team?”

“They don’t know either, but it must be important.” Gordon snorted and rolled his eyes dramatically, but his curiosity won over his frustration – a rare triumph.

“How do you know it’s important if you don’t know what it’s about?”

“Because it has such a boring name,” Amy reasoned, as though that settled matters.

“What?”

“You’ve been in California too long Mr President. In DC, important committees are given uniquely boring names. That way, reporters assume the discussions are equally boring and they don’t ask too many questions.” She smiled as he processed this new information.

“But what if a committee has an exciting name?”

“Then the reverse is true.”

“So, my afternoon meeting with the Top-Secret Existential Risk Management Committee?”

“Small cheese I’m afraid – more of a formality.”

“Right.” The Whitehouse was now in view. The moment Gordon had always dreamed of was coming to pass and yet he seemed elsewhere. Amy watched as the leader of the free world mouthed the words ‘Future Planning Committee’ repeatedly until the motorcade came to a halt.

As soon as he entered, the President was bombarded with adulatory hugs and handshakes from adoring campaign staff and political allies alike. He favoured each individual camera with a familiar smile and a perfunctory greeting as he glided through the adoring rabble.

Before long, however, he found his team herded into a long corridor. His aides fell away as a faceless official, with a level of security clearance the Gordon had never even seen before, guided him into a small room. A lift.

No buttons were pressed. No buttons existed. Yet the lift moved down. After descending what felt like thirty floors, the official stood aside and gestured for Gordon to exit. He didn’t follow.

As the doors closed, an unfamiliar cold gripped his body. What was it? Fear? Anxiety? Loneliness? This was the first time Gordon had been alone since becoming Governor of California over eight years ago. He crept tentatively down the corridor towards an innocuous wooden door labelled ‘Future Planning Committee.’ After steadying his hand, he knocked thrice, and the door opened.

“Good morning, Mr President! I’m Admiral Bauer. Come have a seat!”

Admiral Bauer was a large man with a face like a spade and a nose like a deformed strawberry. He gave Gordon a hearty handshake and escorted him to a small, round table where two others, a man and a woman, were already seated.

“This is General Mathers and General Peterson,” both nodded towards him. Neither stood up. “Together, the three of us make up the Future Planning Committee.” The admiral took his seat across from the President and beamed at him expectantly.

“Alright, you need to tell me what…”

“Oh dear, how rude of me!” The admiral leapt to his feet with the grace of a much lighter man. “Would you like a drink? Water, coffee, something a little stronger?” At this, his bushy eyebrows hopped up and down excitedly.

“No. I’d just like to know…”

“Apologies for the lack of nibbles, you must be starving! I’m afraid we don’t entertain much and, well, it’s hard to secure funding from the Treasury when we can’t tell them what we do,” he chuckled.

“Admiral Bauer, sit down,” ordered Gordon, in what he hoped was a commanding tone, not a juvenile outburst. Bauer sighed, strolled back to the table, and collapsed into the long-suffering plastic chair. “What does the Future Planning Committee do?” There was an awkward pause as the trio exchanged knowing looks. It was the woman who spoke.

“We monitor the greatest security threats the US has ever faced.” At this, Gordon felt almost relieved. A major vote-winner during the campaign, his slogan ‘tough on China but tougher on prices’ had 87% approval in focus groups. His line in the debate about ‘making sure the 21st Century had an American accent’ had exploded on Twitter. He knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Listen lady, we have a plan for the Chinese threat – a carrot and stick approach,” he waited for her to ask what he meant. No response, but he ploughed on anyway. “We forge trading links with the ‘carrot’ of US market access whilst deterring aggression with the ‘stick’ of a revamped US naval presence in the Pacific. The result will be security, affordability, and a brighter tomorrow for all Americans.”

The woman gazed at him incredulously; her steely gaze flickering with ill-disguised bafflement – an emotion which seemed foreign to her coal-black eyes. The flowery words withered and died as Gordon’s winning smile fell from his face, almost as quickly as it had returned.

“Actually Mr President,” interjected the second man, “General Peterson wasn’t referring to China. She was referring to…”

“Don’t tell me - Russia! You’re right Peterson, the Kremlin is a more immediate threat,” Gordon proclaimed, rediscovering his mojo without having to look too hard. “Again, what’s needed is a carrot and stick approach. But this time, we’ll shove the carrot up their asses, followed by the stick, followed by a larger, rougher carrot…”

“Mr President!” Admiral Bauer’s jovial smile remained but his eyes had grown weary. The game was over. “Please let’s not do this by process of elimination.”

“Go on then, tell me.” Gordon had hardly ever been interrupted in his life but, again, curiosity won out. “What is this great security threat?”

“Well… it’s the aliens.”

“Aliens?”

“Yes, the aliens.” Gordon stiffened his jaw and gazed into the middle distance.

“Now look Bauer, I know the last administration had some hardline views, but I will never refer to irregular migrants as ‘aliens.’ These are human beings in search of a better life and, whilst we must maintain strong borders, this great nation of ours was founded on…”

“Forgive me Mr President, you’ve misunderstood.” Gordon baulked at being interrupted for the second time on one day, just as he was getting into his rhythm. “I’m not referring to ‘aliens’ from the Southern border. I’m referring to ‘aliens’ from… well… Space.” Bauer at least had the decency to look embarrassed as he spoke the last word. Meanwhile, Gordon burst into laughter.

What followed was a predictably repetitive to and fro, as Bauer tried to explain the situation and Gordon dismissed each effort as a practical joke, perhaps a hazing ritual or an office bet. The impasse was breached when Bauer pointed out that the lift would not return for over two hours. The President therefore might as well hear him out.

“Alright, I’ll bite. Why are they such a threat?”

“Well, it’s very complicated Mr President but I’d say it comes down to two things. Firstly, they are a bloodthirsty race of intergalactic expansionists focussed on nothing but the subjugation of other species.” Gordon shivered. This was a strange joke. “Secondly… we made a rather poor first impression.”

“A poor first impression?”

“Almost a century ago, one of their explorers crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico,” Gordon leaned forward. This sounded familiar. “By then, the Committee had been established. We had a strategy,” Bauer sighed. “But the CIA found the explorer before we did…”

“What did they do?”

“They captured it, killed it, and performed a secret autopsy for no apparent reason. Relations have been rocky ever since.” Gordon locked eyes with Bauer. Electric blue met unflinching brown as they sized each other up across the table. Gordon blinked.

“Fine, I’m going to assume what you’re telling me is true. What is our relationship with these…. things?” He was playing along, but he would not use the word ‘aliens.’

“As I say, it’s rocky. They’ve threatened to invade a few times, but…”

“Hang on. What do you mean they’ve threatened to invade? How do you know?” Bauer frowned.

“Well, they told us.”

“How?”

“Forgive me Mr President, I should’ve mentioned. They communicate via light signals beamed towards our planet – you may know them as Aurora Borealis. Anyway…”

“Nice try. There’s a scientific explanation for the Aurora Borealis.” Bauer sighed.

“And what might that be Mr President?”

“Well, the sun emits energy, which hits the atmosphere and becomes electricity, well…. not electricity per se but a kind of space electricity…. green electricity which refracts off the…. y’know…. the top of the atmosphere to make the sky look all…. green.”

“That’s not how it works Mr President…”

“I know that’s not how it works,” snapped Gordon. “But Aurora Borealis is like Bluetooth, or cheese-making, or the financial crisis. Nobody understands it but we can assume there’s an explanation.”

“I’m afraid not Mr President, physicists just pretend to have an explanation so they don’t look silly. Luckily for them, nobody has ever bothered to check.”

“Alright Bauer, the aliens have told you of their intentions via the Northern Lights,” Gordon sighed – resigned either to existential dread or extreme irritation, depending on whether any of this was true. “What do we do? Nuke them?” Bauer gave a wry smile.

“Forgive me Mr President, but threatening the aliens with nukes is like an ant…”

“Okay I get it.”

“Let me finish. Like an ant threatening an elephant with an especially pointy leaf. We have limited information as to their military capacity but, if they did invade, we would last about thirty seconds.”

“Thirty seconds?”

“Yes, the approximate time it would take them to park their spaceships.” Gordon sat back in his chair, stunned. Speechless for the first time in his life. The two generals, who had been typing silently, looked up in confusion until Bauer came to the rescue. “Thankfully, we have a secret weapon. One that they can’t even conceive of…”

“What is it, Bauer?” Gordon leaned forward, hooked to the old man’s words. In fact, he suspected that Bauer was enjoying the suspense.

“Stories, Mr President,” he replied softly. “We can tell stories.”

“Christ Bauer! I expected a Death Star or something.” Gordon raked his hands through his hair. Somehow still perfect. “Stories? What kind of Disney nonsense is that?” Bauer’s gaze did not falter. The amiable chap who’d offered Gordon a drink almost an hour ago had long gone.

“Mr President, how do you know there is no Death Star in space?”

“I assume that’s rhetorical?”

“No.” Gordon stared once again into the unflappable brown eyes.

“Well, I suppose I know it isn’t there because it is fictional. I saw it in a work of fiction.”

“Indeed!” Bauer’s eyes lit up. “Human beings can conceive of things which aren’t there. The aliens can’t.” Gordon was unimpressed.

“Bauer, once again I sense you’re slow walking me to a conclusion. Would you mind, just this once, leaping to it?”

“Of course, Mr President,” Bauer beamed, completely unfazed. “We know from their communications that they have gathered extensive data from afar on our way of life, but they cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. They can’t even grasp the concept of fiction! Take your earlier example. They will have analysed the Star Wars films as though they took place in reality. We believe, therefore, that they fear us.”

“They fear us because they think we have built a Death Star?”

“Essentially, yes. And for a thousand other reasons.” A manic glint had entered Bauer’s eyes. “Mr President, every work of fiction we have ever made will be considered by them to be fact.” Gordon took a deep breath as the cogs in his head whirred incessantly.

“So, your solution is to make more Star Wars movies?”

“Well, partly. Why do you think those awful sequels were made? We’ve also been churning out superhero franchises just to cover all bases. What you must understand is that these aliens have been kept at bay solely by our own imaginations, the stories we create! Isn’t that amazing?”

Gordon struggled to be overly excited about the fact that a bloodthirsty alien race (of which he was previously unaware) were being deterred from an invasion by nothing more than a few middling sci-fi films. Still, he gave it a go.

“That is very good news Bauer. Well, I am going to have to process this…. possibly for the rest of my life. In the meantime, I would like to be across this. We are to meet every two weeks for the remainder of my term. Is that clear?”

“Very good Mr President, I see you’ll be far more engaged than your predecessor.”

“I bet you say that to all the presidents,” grinned Gordan, his winning smile making a tentative return.

“I do indeed, but this time it’s true! The last guy just ordered us to build a wall around the atmosphere.”

“Indeed, well if that’s all I really should be heading back up.”

“But Mr President, we still have two hours and there’s so much more to discuss.”

“More?” Gordon felt as though his mind had been chopped up, deep fried and served with a healthy side of mayonnaise.

“Yes! I will now hand over to General Mathers for the second item on the agenda.” The second man looked up from his laptop and Gordon noticed him properly for the first time. But before Gordon could say a word, his thick fleshy lips began firing out short, sharp syllables like a machine gun. And so, the dance began again.

“Mr President, it’s about time we discussed the ongoing threat posed by Bigfoot…”