[ WP ] You have just been sworn in as President , and are being told the truth about alien life ... but it 's incredibly far from what anyone had ever imagined .

“ Hello Mrs. President. ” 
 
 “ Hello Mr. - ” Hillary glanced at her calendar “ Smith ”. His appointment was for 2 whole hours. This gentleman must be quite important to occupy so much of her time. 
 
 “ Have you become accustomed to your new chair yet? ” he asked with a smile 
 
 “ Well, it's only been a week and I've spent the entire time getting filled in on all sorts of issues, now that my security clearance has been upgraded. ” she said, hoping she did not come across as too complaining. 
 
 “ I'm afraid this is another one of such meetings. ” Mr. Smith said apologetically. 
 
 “ Oh, I'm sure it's not too bad. Most of what happens in here is really just the continuations of old problems my husband used to tell me about. ” 
 
 “ He would n't have heard about this issue, as we did n't know about it before 2002. ” he said. “ Also, I should remind you that this subject is on a strictly need-to-know basis, so you might not want to discuss it with your husband. ” 
 
 Hillary almost chuckled at his little cliché, but something told her that this was serious. The man before her was very well composed and obviously experienced. He did not seem to be impressed with meeting the president for the first time. “ So what is this about? My calender only mentions your name and that you are a scientist of some unspecified sort. ” she said. 
 
 “ Well, that is true, although I would put more on my business card, if I had one. I am the director of a research institution that was founded in late 2002 to examine an object of alien origin. ” he said. 
 
 Hillary knew that many scientists mused about the possibility of aliens, but she had never been interested in that discussion. She knew she should probably be excited about the fact that alien life was apparently confirmed, but she had gotten used to the president-routine now and quickly got on with the practical details. “ Okay. Interesting. How expensive is it and what results have you come up with? ” she asked bluntly. 
 
 “ It is very expensive. Currently we are using about 100 billion dollars annually, and it used to be higher. ” he said. He looked down for a short moment and then continued. “ And as for the results, we are only working on containment, and it is successfully being contained. ”. 
 
 That was a large number. She should have noticed such an amount of money in the budgets. “ I am pretty familiar with the government finances. How do you manage to get that amount of money? I'm pretty sure I have n't seen'Alien research' on any of the budget proposals. ” she said with a smile. 
 
 “ We get it through the military spending of the State Department. ” he said. 
 
 Well the State Department spending did go up 350 billion between 2002 and 2010 but.. “ But how did you get it while the war in Iraq was going on? ” she inquired. 
 
 “ The war was n't as expensive as reported. So we just got the extra overhead. ” he replied. 
 
 Hillery hoped this was n't the *only* reason they had gone to Iraq. “ Okay. You said you were working on containment only? What kind of object is this? ” 
 
 “ Yes, ” he said “ The object is a perfect cube about 1 meter across. We discovered it in the middle of a meteor crater surrounded by a 5 meter thick spherical shield. The inner part of the shield was made of gold and the outer part was made of a very heat resistant and durable alloy. ” 
 
 Hillary did n't care much for the technical aspects, but it seemed well rehearsed, so she did n't interrupt. “ But although the shield was very resistant against blunt force impact, it was easy enough to cut open. So in 2004, we did. We accounted for everything, and prepared for the worst. Even if the cube had been made out of antimatter, the bunker would have contained the explosion. At first, after we opened the sphere, it was rather anticlimactic. Just a black cube, covered in a slimy substance. After a few minutes our initial analysis showed that the substance contained an acid, perfect for dissolving the explosion-proof container we had made. We quickly encapsulated it in a plastic container, that the acid should have been inert to, but after a few minutes the substance changed properties and started dissolving the plastic. ” he explained. Mr. Smith shrugged his shoulders and continued. “ We ended up placing it inside the original gold container again. ” 
 
 That did sound anticlimactic. “ So I guess that accounts for the expenses up to 2004. What did you do afterwards? ” Hillary asked. 
 
 “ Well, after we had closed up the gold shell, we detected an extremely small vibration from inside. It turns out, that the substance contained micro machinery which was *drilling* through the gold. This seemed strange since it could have done that before we brought it in. However, it became clear that this object was harvesting energy from the environment and using this to break down the gold. We discovered it because it drilled far less in the gold after we turned off the lights when replacing the shield. ” Mr Smith explained. “ Soon after it completely stopped drilling. We hoped that it meant that it had run out of energy, which could perhaps allow us to do more experiments on it. But after a few months of being in the same container, it suddenly started making its microscopic holes in the gold like it was drilling through butter. We just barely avoided a containment breach, and afterwards we found out, that it had probably harvested energy from combination of two things. A small thermal gradient, and vibration energy from a motor running nearby. ” 
 
 “ A thermal gradient? ” Hillary asked with one eyebrow raised. Now she had let him talk uninterrupted for long enough. Scientists often seemed to have a habit of sliding into an overly technical jargon when they had been talking for too long. 
 
 “ Sorry, it's when there are two different temperatures on each side of an object. It can be used to generate energy, but it's usually in so tiny amounts that - ” 
 
 “ Okay ”, Hillary interrupted before he could get going again. “ So it seems like it wants to escape, and you are trying to contain it, although it's proving to be difficult. “ 
 
 “ Yes, but the fact that it suddenly started storing its energy instead of constantly drilling, implies that it understands, that it is being contained and it is getting smarter about escaping. This caused us to ramp up the security. There now are quite a lot of layers of different protection mechanisms in place. ” Mr. Smith clarified. 
 
 Hillary could see the difficulties, but it did not seem to make sense. Why was it trying to escape? “ Have you tried communicating with it? ” She asked. 
 
 “ Well, we have tried. We drill small holes in the gold shield to interact with the object and send in signals. Mostly low power, low frequency communication, as we do n't want to give it energy. So far the only response we have gotten is dissolving equipment. ” he said while shrugging his shoulders again. “ We do n't know what it's for or why it's here on earth. We do have some ideas, and they seem to universally conclude that keeping the object isolated from its surroundings is the best course of action. ” 
 
 “ Can you elaborate on the ideas? How can you possibly conclude anything from an object that does n't communicate? ” Hillary asked sceptically. 
 
 “ Well, we know it was sent to earth in a shell that isolated the object. So someone, somewhere thought that sending it without a prison was a bad idea. The question is, why not just throw it into the sun, if they did n't want it to be free? Were they afraid that it would harvest all the energy instead of breaking? But then why not send it out of the galaxy? ” Mr. Smith mused. 
 “ Maybe it is intelligent and destructive. The civilization that banished it might be so peaceful, that they could not get themselves to sentence it to death as they should have. ” 
 
 “ It could also be a friendly gift, wanting to help create peace on earth and the only reason it does n't just explain this to us is because it does n't have enough energy to maintain coherent thoughts. The shield might just have been a wrapping to protect it from the dangers of interstellar travel. But who is going to give the order to release it and see if it is indeed merciful? ” 
 
 “ Maybe it's like a timed bomb; when monkeys get smart enough to open it, it will kill them all. Whoever sent it could be afraid of competition between intelligent species. And they just had n't expected anyone to be as cautious as us. There is just no way to really know ” 
 
 Hillary agreed. The choice was flipping a coin with all of humanity at risk. Heads; it is peace on earth, tails; it is destruction of mankind. Earth is well enough off not to flip that coin. “ Thank you for the briefing, please continue your work. ” she said. 
 
 Mr. Smith bowed politely and left the room.
