Nobody Here But Us…
by Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri
(c) 2002 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[20X6-04-16, 10:48 AM, Gen. George F. Endicott Medical Facility, Fort Belvoir, Virginia]

Maybe it was a slight darkening of the doorway, or perhaps some subtle difference in air currents or personal scents that alerted her to the additional presence in her cluttered lab.  Or maybe it was the thundering, repeated thwacking of Mel's leather-soled shoe on the desk, Kruschev-style, next to her head.
Martina, shaken, stirred.  With her fingers she prodded the flat pink spot on her forehead left by the weight of her dozing head on the greenish industrial desk.
Dr. Melanie Forten slipped the shoe back onto a slender foot and waited.  Dr. Martina Newsome propped herself up on her elbows and massaged her temples.
"Thanks," Marty croaked.  "I was having a horrible nightmare that I was training chickens to run mazes while the President's Chief of Staff was trying to coach them for an interview with Jay Leno."
Mel picked up Marty's coffee cup and sniffed it suspiciously.  "Very funny, Grue."  Mel shook her bottle-blond head.  Her thin, wry smile was picked out in subtle hues.  "I know it's your job to crack the whip, not mine, but you can sleep when you're dead.  Daily progress reports.  Orders.  So far, we're only a day behind...."
Dr. Martina Newsome gently laid her forehead back on her desk.  Then she did it again, slightly harder.  On the third repetition, the coffee cup jumped.  Mel slipped quickly behind Marty and dragged her chair away from the desk, a foot or two outside of head-banging range.
"Oh, no," reprimanded Mel.  "You don't get to take the easy way out.  Colonel Sanders is due any minute now."
Marty sighed and scooted her chair back towards her desk.  She took her coffee mug back from Melanie with faux rancor.  "I'm going to need a lot more than coffee to get through this."  She stuck her fingers in her copper hair, mostly making sure she hadn't ripped it all out.
Mel clucked.  "Do you want me to wheel you down to the break room for a refill?"
Marty stood, shrugging into her shapeless bag of a lab coat.  "I don't need a mother hen."
Mel groaned and mimed various forms of physical violence at Marty's departing back.

* * * * *

[20X6-04-13 2:12 PM, Oval Office, The White House]

"Xenobiology."
The wiry-haired man covered the mouthpiece of his phone, annoyed.  "Ma'am?"
"Doctor," she corrected.  "Not Biography.  Xenobiology.  I'm the xenobiology specialist.  Colonel Flander's team.  I'm trained for first contact, Mr. President."  Martina ran a hand over her hair to disguise the fact that she had nearly thwacked the heel of her palm to her forehead.
Mr. President uncovered the mouthpiece of his telephone handset and spoke.  "Okay, Einstein, Sagan, and Feynman are all dead.  So find me someone who's not dead, or find me a damned good medium.  Is John Edward, that "Crossing Over" guy, an American?"
The President drummed his fingers.  "No, that's no good.  Hawking's a Brit.  Security risk."
While he listened to the griping on the other end of the line, Marty felt his eyes travel up and down her form, evaluating longish but heavy legs, broad hips, thick stomach, smallish breasts, dusky complexion, professional plum pant suit, squinty brown eyes, hair like brass wool.  Marty seethed, but it was a response with which she was practiced and comfortable.  Her bristling didn't seem to bug any of the other staffers in the Oval Office, at least one of whom was a security officer.
"Trust me.  A Nucker is less of a security risk than a Brit.  I've seen the invasion plans."
She maintained a smile, well aware that it was more than half a grimace.  The President's telephone conversation continued.  "Well, the zeniobriology specialist is here.  Get the conference room ready – and tell the press they'll have to wait at least another two hours."
The President hung up the phone, unconsciously mimicking her smoothing-the-hair gesture.  "Jeezus," he added, to no one in particular, taking a breath or two to compose himself.
He leaned forward.  "Doctor Newsome, thanks for coming.  You're here to brief me because I'm sick of looking like an idiot.  People need to be able to have a bit more confidence that things are being handled as well as they can be, given the circumstances.  You do your job so I can do mine.  Don't be gentle.  We don't have the time, and I can take it."
"Where do I start, Mr. President?"
"Try the beginning."
"Okey dokey."  Dr. Newsome crossed her arms under her breasts, somehow bridging the gap between relaxed and defensive.  "The meteoroid-thingy that was spotted two months ago – the one they said would burn up in the atmosphere – didn't burn up.  It slowed down and, um, landed.  On a soccer field in a public park in Atlanta."
"Yeah, I got that.  CNN Headquarters just down the road.  Very convenient – for everybody but us."
"Right, sir.  It was a big box, basically.  About the size of two semis.  About an hour after it set down, a door opened and eighteen chickens came down the ramp."
"Chickens."  The President paused halfway to tapping his teeth with his Mont Blanc, showing evidence of the success of extensive psychological conditioning on the part of the First Lady.
"Yep."  Leather pumps scuffed at the Berber on the floor.  "One rooster, seventeen hens.  Sixteen, after one wandered out into traffic on Tenth Street.  That was when authorities on site – National Guard, I think – decided to intervene and round them up."
"Including the squashed one?"
"Including the squashed one.  Impounded the car, too."
"Chickens."
"More or less.  Damned near identical to pre-domesticated guinea fowl from West Africa – at least on the outside.  Haven't had time to get more detailed than that, but there's a lab at the CDC cranking on the DNA as we speak."
"Not a hoax?"
"Incredibly unlikely, Mr. President.  NASA has tracked the object for months.  And rumor has it that the tech boys are having spontaneous orgasms, like, every half-hour.  The craft's like nothing any of them have ever seen short of a George Lucas film."
"You sure this isn't some kind of gag from Hollywood?"
"I'm just relaying what I've heard, Mr. President.  If it's a hoax, an awful lot of people are in on it – but I'm not ruling it out."
Mr. President tangled his fingers in his graying waves.  "Space chickens."
"Space chickens, Mr. President."
"I hate this job."
Dr. Martina Newsome had nothing to say to that.

* * * * *

Conventional wisdom part one, harvested from the SlashDot Internet forum 20X6-04-13, 11:14 PM:

"It's a hoax, right?  I mean, chickens?  Who could take this seriously?  I can't believe I'm even posting here."

"It's fcuking obvious.  _All_ life on Earth is intelligent!  We're just so anthropocentric that we're not willing to make the effort necessary to understand our fellow earth-astronauts."

"We'll, *I*, for one, prefer white meat."

"Racist comments like _that_ WILL NOT be tolerated, Adolf.  Anyone who wants to can trace your IP address back to yo' momma's basement."

"EAT MOR BEFE"

"I'm not surprised.  Jesus was actually a chicken,  you know.  Look what happened to *him*.  The Jews and Romans just couldn't handle the Truth!"

"Don't _you_ start.  Who pulled your string?"

"Hoax or not, it was one helluva show.  I keep replaying that QuickTime segment of that hen getting squashed by the Rav4.  Feathers everywhere!  Chicken snuff films R0X0R!  Thanks, CNN!" 

"I can say /this/ for a fact: this whole scenario is way to stupid to be a government conspiracy of some kind.  Anyone have a differing opinion they’d care to air?"

"You can 'pull' my 'string' anytime, babe."

"That was the signal!  I can feel it in my gizzard!  THE TIME FOR THE MIGHTY CHICKEN REVOLUTION HAS COME!!!!"

"Souvenir 'space-chicken' feathers FOR SALE on eBAY!  CLUCK HERE!"

* * * * *

[20X6-04-13 4:31 PM, Lecture Hall D-14, The Pentagon]

The press conference was delayed another six hours.  More experts showed up and everyone was shuttled from the White House, at which point everything started over.  Phones kept ringing while more last-minute data came in, everything piped through hastily erected scrambled channels.  Chaos ensued.
A passing elderly smartass with a whole constellation of stars on his shoulders said it was about normal for wartime – although no one voiced the recommendation to declare war on chickens.  Yet.
More data came in twice while Marty was speaking, trying her best to remain businesslike under the circumstances.  She took a moment each time to insert the new stuff into her notes in an appropriate place.  She paused, visibly amused, when the sergeant-at-arms threatened to pull a gun if the joint crews from Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Oak Ridge wouldn't settle down.
Continuing, Marty relayed her new information.  "We're not sure what this nonstandard protein means yet.  It's not as spectacular as the fluorescent green protein pigment that got spliced into a rabbit's DNA as an art project a few years back, but it's something worth noting. Except for that, all of the active DNA is identical to the terrestrial fowl the birds resemble.  The junk DNA, though – all the random crap that the process of evolution has left in our genes, the stuff that has no bearing unless there's an error in cell-replication – is vastly different, however.  We find this to be some cause for concern."
While the spontaneous debate raged as to whether the new data definitively proved extraterrestrial origin – or the exact opposite – one of the tech crew (not a single woman among them, Marty noticed) was heard to exclaim something about gravel and potato chips.  Two security personnel (one of whom was female, Marty noted with pride) hauled the offender out of his seat and frog-marched him to the door, where he somehow convinced them to let him remain.  That was fortunate, as he was the one to speak next.
"Hi, all.  I'm Dr. Alan Schwartz," he said into the microphone at the lectern, introducing himself as he adjusted his suit jacket, still gathering his composure.  "Sorry about the disturbances from the engineering and physical sciences crews.  Umm.  I'm sorry to say that we've been having the same problems everyone else has, believability- and credibility-wise."
Marty considered that maybe he was chosen for his part due to his resemblance to Peter Weller's character in that 1980s "Buckaroo Banzai" movie.  Wider tie, grayer hair.  She wondered vaguely whether he could play a piano or drive a racecar.
He rubbed nervously at his receding gray-brown hairline, surreptitiously making sure it hadn't budged in the past twelve hours, regardless of having a good excuse.
He continued.  "I've worked for the government and the private sector for more than fifteen years.  I've been a, well, a rocket scientist since they stopped putting tiles on Space Shuttles.  I've done hands-on stuff, theoretical designs, and even some consultation for a few science fiction authors.  What I've seen in the past eight hours literally makes me nuts.  Makes us all nuts."
Schwartz scratched his thin chest under his suit jacket.  "I think we're about ready to spread the joy."
He cleared his throat.  "First of all, don't get your hopes up.  We don't understand jack.  We don't even understand how a dozen and a half chickens stayed alive in there for the two months we've all been watching it.
"In the passenger compartment – or cargo, payload, whatever, depending on your views of chickens –" there was a scattering of laughter, most of it emanating from the engineers' area, Marty noted  "– we found twenty large pillows, like nests.  One of them had four brown eggs in it.  There was a sunken trough with fresh water in it – a little rich in deuterium, but it seems the chickens were drinking it anyway.  There was another trough of what was obviously feed.  And there was chicken-excrement everywhere.  Maybe about a week's worth, according to our farming expert.  It's all being analyzed now.
"Some of the craft's systems made a little sense.  Where an earthly design would have had an energy source, our chicken delivery vehicle had an eight-hundred-pound rectangular block of what seems to be ordinary granite.  Everything that we guess is control or guidance or maybe communications system was connected to a forty-pound potato.  A giant russet baker, according to our farmer.  Right where a sane man would have put a computer.  This is all like some old Gary Larson 'Far Side' cartoon."
Doctor Schwartz scratched his nose and put on a pair of reading spectacles.  The gesture made him look another ten years older, easy.
"There's no motor – no source of thrust or reaction mass," he went on, "so it must be magnetic or gravitic or something else we don't understand even a skosh.  Given that, we have no reason to believe that the craft can't take off again should we put everything back the way we found it.  If it was capable of making the maneuvers we saw it make on tape, there’s no reason to think it couldn't leave as effortlessly as it arrived.
"I believe I speak for us all at the National Labs when I say we are very, very amused – but not necessarily happy."
A barrage of questions flew across Schwartz's bow.  He held up a hand.
"We haven't ruled out either terrestrial or extraterrestrial origin.  But we all pretty much feel that someone – here, there, or yonder – is yanking our chain.  One of our boys has even suggested, about as credibly as anything else, that this bucket of chicken is from Earth – but not from the present time.  Either distant past or somewhat less distant future.
"It's added a few more columns to the betting pool paperwork, but it hasn't ruled anything out yet."
There was another flurry of questions.
Schwartz put up a final hand.  "Please.  Colonel, umm, Flanders has asked that you save all of your questions until everyone's had a chance to explain their findings – in the hopes that some of the crazier questions will get ruled out before we have to embarrass ourselves by asking them.  Just write them down on your little mil-spec legal pads and scratch them off as your hear someone else ask them.  Thanks."
Alan Schwartz resumed his seat in the engineers' section as Flanders, glaring at his departing back, came forward.
Colonel Philip Flanders – an aging half-Asian man in an Army uniform – climbed slowly back up to the lectern and bent the microphone down a tad to match his height.  Completely at ease now, he flipped through his notes, slowly.
"You've heard our NASA bunch say they're sure the craft in the park was the same object they called an Earth-grazing asteroid a few months back, unless their pilot was David Copperfield.  Speaking of which, Dr. James Randi and his team of debunkers are still working hard and aren't yet ready to report.  Let's see.... You've heard from the media analysts who have gone over the footage from the six news crews and the buttload of amateur tapes, who claim that none of the tapes seem to have been tampered with and that they all pretty much show the same thing from different angles."
He paused for a moment as an aide sidled up and handed him a note.  He frowned considerably after reading it, but picked up where he left off.  "The SETI people, of whom I'm sure you all have heard, say they are happy with their shiny new federal funding contract, and report that they are concentrating on any number of theoretical points of origin, including reviewing old data recorded ages back to see if they missed anything relevant.  Their hot-shit distributed computing environment should have some results – positive or negative, certified tamper-free – within six hours."
Flanders cleared his throat and went on.  "You've heard from our psychosocial team –" a smattering of laughter here and there in the lecture hall, some sort of in-joke, Marty speculated, some alternative meaning of 'psycho social', perhaps "– who have warned us about the numerous ways the public are likely to jump should this event be classified as a hoax – or not, as the case may be.  You've heard from our xenobiology team who say the occupants of the craft were actually chickens, either tampered with genetically or otherwise not from around here – with no evidence of recognizable attempts to communicate or anything higher than average chicken intelligence so far.  You've heard from the tech crews who have pretty much confirmed that there is a new major player in the game – advanced potato technology or no – with no confirmation either way about the craft being of extraterrestrial origin."
Colonel Flanders sighed audibly.  "And now we have a new snag."  He flicked the corner of his newest note-card, indicating that his previous irritation wasn't with the gloating SETI crew, as Marty had thought.  Marty had been pulling for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence bunch since they had lost public funding decades ago.
Flanders took a moment before continuing, apparently in no hurry to add to the conceptual mayhem.  "A couple of decades ago the United States Congress authorized the signing of a treaty with a few of our closest enemies.  That treaty stated that if any of us ever stumbled upon technology of obvious extraterrestrial origin, we would all share it among ourselves.  I have just now been made aware that one of these good friends' ambassador to the U.N. has, in front of God and everybody, recommended storming the Pentagon unless we share everything with everyone – the entire U.N.
"Now you get a new thing to think about:  What will happen should we turn over a troop of chickens, a giant potato, and a lump of granite to the brand spanking new United Nations Committee on Extraterrestrial Technologies – and what would happen should we tell them all to go take a hike.  World Affairs team, you need to add that to your plate, if you haven't already.  You get an hour to come up with your initial opinions.  The general Q and A session can wait until after then."
"Ladies, gentlemen, get back to work."  Flanders stepped down and headed for a phone.

* * * * *

From Dr. Martina "Gruesome" Newsome's notes from the meeting of 20X6-04-13, 7:07 PM, surrendered upon leaving the conference as a matter of National Security:

Possibilities:
v	Craft is extraterrestrial in origin
§	Chickens built a spaceship and flew it here from God knows where – must ask them how they did it
§	Craft contained genuine aliens and technology, but all of the creatures and artifacts were somehow transformed at landing into things that wouldn't be too hard for us rural hicks to understand
§	Someone in Atlanta subscribed to the Space-Chicken-of-the-Month Club and won't own up
§	Some nice aliens sent us a care-package of yummy chickens as a goodwill gift
§	Some nice aliens sent us a care-package of yummy chickens – and they're poisoned/carrying a biological pathogen/programmed to detonate/gonna crow at all hours of the night (Trojan Horse to soften us up for the invasion?  CDC report still in progress, preliminary data negative....)
§	Maybe livestock were sent separately from main ship (lost luggage?)
§	Lifeboat from some kind of Ark
§	Partial payback for hundreds of years of mutilated cattle (first installment?)
§	This sort of thing goes on all the time – it's how new species get started
§	Could be a test vehicle, which is why it's got chickens in it rather than aliens
v	Craft is terrestrial in origin
§	These chickens have been away for a good long while and have just now come home to roost (shot into space by a previous earthly space-capable society?)
▪	Some bad-ass farmer/geneticist/physicist is trying to make us all look stupid
▪	Some ten-year-old with a time machine a hundred years from now is trying to make us all look stupid
▪	Could be a test vehicle, which is why it's got chickens in it rather than people

What we should do about it:
1.	Invite all the heads of states to come eat the chickens and the potato, because if we don't, it's a mortal insult and our alien benefactors will come kick our asses.  (The granite is just a garnish?  Centerpiece?)
2.	Stop eating chickens, because they are obviously all superintelligent extraterrestrials, and if we keep eating them, the space chickens will come and kick our asses.
3.	Immediately start studying the subtle intelligence of potentially space-faring barnyard animals, the untapped energy production potential of granite and the untapped computing potential of potatoes.
4.	Fill the cabin of the craft with a fresh batch of chickens and a new monster potato and send it packing.
5.	Replace the potato with a humongous pumpkin, fill the cabin with a handful of volunteer Elvis impersonators, and send it packing.  And maybe swap out their granite for a nice chunk of Italian marble, while we're at it.  (C.f., geocaching?  WTF?)
6.	Get rid of all the evidence and claim it was a hoax.  And then forget it ever happened.  (Didn't we do that last time?)

* * * * *

[20X6-04-16, 6:20 PM, Gen. George F. Endicott Medical Facility, Fort Belvoir, Virginia]

Melanie smoothed a wrinkle in her jeans.  "I recommend we print up a bunch of 'I SURVIVED THE CHICKEN INVASION OF 20X6' T-shirts and sell them online.  They'll cushion the blow a bit when we can't get jobs doing anything else in the field ever again.  Might I also add, for the record, I frickin' hate chickens.  They're stupid and they stink."
She took a sip of her contraband beer, ostensibly smuggled into the building's cafeteria except that no one seemed to care, and primly wiped a trace of lipstick from the edge of her translucent plastic cup.  "And I hate drinking beer out of these things.  It looks like a urine specimen.  And it gets warmer quicker, which doesn't necessarily take away from the illusion that you're drinking urine.  And then there's the fact that it's 'lite' beer...." she trailed off.
Marty sighed.  "I'll be sure to put that in the report.  But out in the trenches they call this stuff 'near beer', which is frankly ironic since this stuff has never been near real beer.  Thank goodness the ethanol in the supply room evaporates out of the bottles so quickly."
Mel's brow wrinkled, aghast.  "You spiked this, Grue?"
"Just a touch.  I mean, what would be the point of drinking it, otherwise?  The aesthetic charms, as you have noted, are fairly slim."
Mel considered this.  "You're bad-ass," she concluded.
"Yeah," Marty shrugged.  "I'm the one who gets summoned to the Oval Office to wipe the President's butt for him.  That's why I make almost as much as a tenured public high school teacher.  Do not screw with the wizard in her lair."
"You should have strangled him while you had the chance.  He's done nothing but cut funding for research and education since he took the Oath.  And that total Christian Scientist he's got advising him on biotech stuff....  He's, like, an actual medical doctor, yet he says that an autopsy is a desecration of the dead.  How the hell did he make it through Freshman Anatomy?"
Marty grimaced.  "I remember we were both a little green, sawing on our cadavers in Anatomy.  Some people never get over it."
Mel pounded the plastic table twice.  "Gruesome!  I can't believe you're defending him!  He's totally against cloning and stem cell research, regardless of the application.  He's a superstitious, stodgy old moron!  I say we whip up a pit-bull/gila monster mix in the lab and air-mail it to his house to do him up right."
Marty laugh/snorted and sloshed her beer.  "I'm so tired I'm goofy and spastic.  Beer was so much the right call.  I'm docking your pay for this, sister."
Mel just laughed, hearty and tinkling.
Marty pushed her chair back from the table.  "Time to go time the chickens on the new maze.  Whoopee."
"Oh yeah," queried Mel.  "When's their spot airing on Leno?  I need to set up the TiVo."
"Tuesday night."
"Right." 

* * * * *

Conventional wisdom, part two, Word on the Street (TV interviews – collected 20X6-04-18):

"That was a hoax, right?  I mean, I've seen "Chicken Run".  Chickens can't fly."

"I dunno.  I think they came to tell us to stop eating chickens."

"Yeah, I was there.  I kinda expected them to unroll a huge banner that said 'EAT MORE BEEF' or something.  It's got to be some kind of marketing thing gone wrong.  Horribly wrong.  I can see why no one would own up after that one got run over."

"All I know is they scared my daughter half to death.  I say fry 'em!"

"It doesn't really matter, does it?  Genuine or not, the government's got no choice but to declare it a hoax so everyone can get on with their lives, you know?  We won't know for sure until the sheep land theirs in New Zealand."

"[laughter]  I hear some goof is selling Space Chickens on eBay now.  That's what this was all about, right?  McDonalds is gonna be selling Chicken Roll-Ups?"

"Hunh.  I wish I knew what to think.  It doesn't make any sense at all, not even as a joke.  I mean, what was the punchline?"

"I think the chickens were just some of the food they brought with them.  The real aliens were invisible, like in the 'Predator' movies.  And now they're out wandering around, learning our secrets and planning their takeover.  The chickens were just a decoy."  [interviewer question unintelligible]  "I don't get on the Internet much because I have, like, a really slow modem.  What's Slash Dock?"

"I'm just glad it's over!  For two, three weeks, it was just the 'THE END IS NEAR' bunch on the streets telling us that the asteroid was God's Judgment coming to wipe us all out, like.  Now it's all over and it was just chickens.  I'm stumped, you know, just like everyone else, but at least we're not all dead.  I couldn't stand it if those weirdo Jesus Freaks were right, you know?  Even if I was dead."

"It was God's Mercy!  Because there were just enough believers, God turned the asteroid into a box of chickens!  Go to church and give thanks!"

* * * * *

Hell is a Late Night Talk Show (taped 20X6-04-17 3:35 PM New York City, aired 20X6-04-19 2:14 AM EST on UPN)

Dr. Newsome:  "Well, yes, these five hens are some of the same chickens that came out of the craft at Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia, one week ago."  [audience:  "Oooh!" ]

Famous Talk Show Host:  "Can they speak English, or will you be translating?"  [audience: laughter]

Dr. N.:  "I'll be speaking for them, for the most part.  They don't seem to have caught onto English yet.  We've started them on Sesame Street, but a week  isn't a lot of time – and let's face it.  These guys aren't E.T."

FTSH:  "Heh heh.  So give us the skinny, Doctor.  Are these scrawny chickens really from space?  [effortlessly scoops up a hen, thrusts it at a camera]  How about this one?  This one looks like she's from space."

Dr. N.:  "Physiologically, these birds are identical to wild guinea fowl of coastal West Africa, the birds from which most domesticated chickens descend.  Their scientific name is [censored].  What was that bleep?"  [audience: "Oooooh!"]

FTSH:  "Paranoia.  If the censors don't recognize it, it might be a naughty word."  [audience: guffaws]  "They don't get out much."

Dr. N.:  "Right.  Well, anyway, they are slightly genetically different in a way that makes us think they are artificially altered, maybe even built from scratch."  [audience: titters]  "I swear that was unintentional."

FTSH:  "The FCC fines us $2000 for every really bad pun.  You can bet we're holding that out of your speaking fees – and out of their chicken feed."  [audience: laughter]

Dr. N.:  "I'm getting paid for this?  I was told I had to do this because I drew the short straw."  [audience: snickering]

FTSH:  "Well, someone's getting paid, trust me.  You'll have to talk to your boss about your cut."

Dr. N.:  "I'll certainly remember to do that when I get back to Washington."

FTSH:  "Back to the space chickens.  You've said they're not run-of-the-mill chickens.  But are they actually from space?"

Dr. N.:  "NASA is quite willing to swear that they've been to space, but no one's willing to put any stock –"

FTSH:  "Chicken stock?  Livestock?"  [audience: groans/guffaws]

Dr. N.:  "That's your $2000, not mine.  There's no real evidence that they've ever been outside the orbit of Jupiter."

FTSH:  "Could they be from Mars, then?"

Dr. N.:  "'Hens are from Venus, Cocks are from Mars'?"  [audience: groans]

FTSH:  "We might have to fine you five thousand dollars for that one.  But straight up, is it a hoax?"

Dr. N.:  "I'm from Washington – delivering a message from Washington, anyway.  You aren't going to get 'straight up'."  [audience: titters]  "There was nothing on board their vehicle that people from Earth couldn't come up with in short order.  And 'hoax' involves an intent to deceive.  If a sane person intended to put one over on us, would they use chickens?"  [audience: laughter]  "Given access to genetic manipulations like we've seen, anything could have come down that ramp.  Our best guess is that it's all just a bad joke that nobody gets."

FTSH:  "What about the ship?"

Dr. N.:  "Given the reports I've seen, I wouldn't have put anyone I cared about in that box.  There are a few neat tricks in there – if you're air-mailing chickens.  Of course, the National Security Act has been invoked and everything is impounded until the Feds are done with it – it was all still fairly spectacular in terms of an orbit-to-ground vehicle, even if not exceptionally sturdy-looking.  Maybe it will come in handy with the International Space Station, once we're sure it's safe."

FTSH:  "What about the poor psycho who invented it?  Doesn't he – or she – deserve some cash for the innovation?"

Dr. N.:  "Certainly.  And he – or she – also deserves the bill for all the ruckus.  So far, this circus has cost the American Taxpayer a couple billion dollars.  We'd be more than glad to hand over the financial obligation, if we knew who to finger."

FTSH:  "Blackmail?  Oh, for shame!"  [audience: "Oooooh!"]

Dr. N.:  "You expected anything less?"  [audience: tittering]  "Making sure that vehicle – and these chickens – weren't a danger to the American Public was expensive!  Is expensive.  These chickens are still being studied, as is the vehicle.  If someone would like to come forward and explain a few things, they could still save the taxpayers a few million dollars.  Selling that vehicle design – or an improved version – may be the only way to make our – your – money back."

FTSH:  "Well.  I'd like mine in Baby Blue – when they're street-legal."  [audience: laughter]  "Thanks bunches!  Everybody, spunky Doctor Martina Newsome!"  [audience: applause]

Dr. N.:  "Spunky?"  [drowned out by audience applause]

FTSH:  "Time for a commercial.  Next up, the musical group King Kong, with 'Funny Farm'!"  [audience: applause]

* * * * *

[20X6-04-18 8:04 AM, Col. Philip Flanders's Office, The Pentagon]

"Spunky?!  I'm suing!  Who the hell am I, Mary Lou Retton?  And where's my money, bitch?"
Colonel Flanders sighed, holding up a hand for peace.  "First, I'd like to thank you very much for being professional enough to close the door before going off.  I appreciate it tremendously.  It makes things much easier.  Mainly because I agree with every objection you're going to make, and I'm gonna try my damnedest to make it all better."
Marty felt the paneled walls of Flanders' Pentagon office closing in.  "Sir?"
Flanders turned the monitor off on his computer, folded his hands together on the mahogany desk in front of him.  "The United States government has used you horribly," he admitted. " We needed someone who was no-nonsense, non-threatening, and preferably female – although not too much like a spokesmodel – just to keep things tame out there.  And shall I say, you were spectacular.  Witty, charming, intelligent, disarming, and up-front – all within the guidelines we gave you.  You even improvised where we needed you to."
Already simmering when she arrived, Marty started to boil over at the "spokesmodel" comment.
"And here's your check."
There was a brief pause.  Marty stared, flustered, at an envelope Flanders had picked up from the top of the stack in his black plastic "Out" box.
"What?"
"Regs say you can't take money from anyone but the government on government business.  Rules are rules," Flanders related mildly.  "And I, for one, follow those rules.  But no one says we can't take the money, turn it around, and cut you a healthy bonus for a job remarkably well done.  Here.  Go buy a Lexus.  Well, most of a Lexus.  Certainly a Camry."
"Shit."
"You're welcome.  Now get back to work."
Marty turned to go, stunned by a hammering blow from a huge wad of cash.
"You have another six, maybe ten shows to do before the public lets you off the hook.  You do the U.N. Saturday night.  Kick-ass reception.  Make the most of it."

* * * * *

[20X6-04-24, 11:11 AM, Gen. George F. Endicott Medical Facility, Fort Belvoir, Virginia]

Mel dropped the folder of prints from the electron microscope on the lab table.  "I don't get it."
Marty sighed.  "What's to get?"
"These chickens.  The party line.  I mean, huge sections of the unused code in the DNA are different.  And I'm not even going to mention the mitochondria.  These f–, er, cluckers are not earthly fowl.  They were made by someone who had a good ten years to blow with a code sequencer per chicken, someone who knew what a guinea fowl was supposed to look like and act like.  Sequencers of any usable caliber just aren't that old.  And anything could be encoded by the junk DNA we've seen – a new Disney DVD, twenty more books of the Bible.  A spontaneous mutation could produce a giant blue ape or a singing wombat from the very next egg.  And you tour the country with your troop of bogus chickens – God knows we still wear the big plastic yellow bunny suits whenever we go near the real ones – telling people they're a harmless gag."
Marty shrugged tersely.  "We'd never be given the leisure to figure it out if D.C. were under siege.  If we went out and preached any of the fifty worst-case scenarios, these birds and the horse they rode in on would be sacrificed, in fervent ignorance, to Pele in the nearest nuclear volcano."  It was only obvious to Mel, as a long-time friend and confidant, that Marty was tense and conflicted.  Marty wouldn't look her in the eye.  "Wouldn't you, personally, rather know the truth – and shouldn't we, as educated experts in our field, find a way to make it our business to worry about it, since we're a step closer to being able to do something about it, rather than making them worry about it?"
"Hmm," Mel grimaced, tapping her fingers together with an overload of nervous energy, hypercaffeination, and repressed anger.  "Very 'Men In Black'.  We lie to them for their own good, maybe spin it a little so we can tell them the truth later, in bits and pieces, when we think they can handle it.  I don't think I like that.  People deserve to know what's going on.  If we don't know, we should say we don't know."
"For the most part, that's what we're saying, Melanie.  It helps that we're not sure about anything.  Everything we say is 'we think this' or 'our best guess is the other'.  We tell them we don't think it's a threat – because if it is, it's way more subtle than it needed to be to blow us all to hell.  It could get iffy if we mishandle what we have, misread any clues.  And that's our job – do what we do the best we know how and don't screw up."
Marty scratched an ear and stared at Mel's fidgeting fingers.  "If someone from the newspaper overheard what you just said a moment ago, the headlines tomorrow would say something like 'Scientists Expect Mutant Wombat Invasion From Space Chickens Eggs' and we'd have picket lines of villagers with pitchforks and torches to get through in the morning – if the lab were still standing.  You know it's true."
Mel's thin face twisted in a wry snort.  "Yeah, but I sure as hell don't like it."
Marty shook her head vigorously.  "I don't either, but that's the only way the project can continue.  I've been through it over and over and over again in my head – and talking it over with you, and with Sanders, and with that lump in the Oval Office, and with my mother.  The only way we can do any good is to play along – and to work fast.  Because any minute now, someone will say something to somebody and the plug will get pulled and everything associated with ever finding out what the hell happened in Atlanta a week ago will disappear down a deep dark hole – and maybe some of us will, too."
"You're scaring me.  A little."
"I've been petrified since I got here, girlfriend.  And I know I'm in trouble when my own mother can't make me feel any better.  But let's get cracking on that junk DNA.  I want to know what monsters are lurking under those chickens' skins, and I want to know by tomorrow afternoon."
"Yeek."
"First thing to do is to isolate the stranger sections and see if we can borrow SETI's distributed computer setup to run matches on the sequences – or at least string it all together so we can watch the Disney movie.  Hell, we can even give a copy to the NSA and they can see if it contains anything that might be linguistic.  The Bible could use an extensive endnotes and errata section.  What do you think?"
Mel shuddered.  "I think we should hurry before the pitchforks and torches get here."

* * * * *

[20X6-04-27 10:08 AM, Meeting Room L1-104, The Pentagon]

"Well, as you can all see from the shape of the table, this is a round-table discussion.  There are no rules except the usual, which is don't make the Secret Service officers draw their weapons.  Just like the brainstorming session in the lecture hall two weeks ago, no records of the goings-on in this room will be allowed to leave other than your memories and impressions – and in the interests of National Security, you are hereby commanded to keep those to yourselves.  Does everyone understand?"
There was a chorus of "Yes, Mr. President."
"Alrighty.  This can of worms has been open for more than long enough.  We're going to have to make a call – hoax versus real thing – soon.  Like tomorrow.  So let's tally up a few salient facts."
A stout man with no hair on his head spoke up.  Marty knew he was with the NASA team, but couldn't remember his name and couldn't see a nametag.  "The craft has actually been to space.  All of our tests show that it was easily capable of surviving reentry.  We've yet to discover the method of thrust for maneuvering or acceleration/deceleration, however.  The kicker, though, is that none of the parts, taken singly, seem to be beyond the capacity of human manufacture, given enough money and time."
"Well, that's not conclusive."  The President scratched his chin.  "What about the critters?  Do we have a final call on that?"
Marty spoke up.  "Our best guess is that they were constructed by a means that is slightly beyond what we know to be current leading-edge technology.  And to get so close to an Earth creature – and I'm including the twenty-kilo russet potato in this, too – points towards an Earthly origin.  Either that, or the aliens responsible have collected samples – which wouldn't be out of the question, assuming they were just choosing not to be subtle this time."
The bald guy chipped in.  "Throw the granite chunk in with that data.  It's not likely granite would form with the same microcrystalline structure without conditions very similar to what goes on in Earth's crust – even if it had to be artificially similar.  The rock is from Earth – or was constructed to be just like a sample picked up here."
The President looked ruffled.  "We're, um, not exactly ruling anything out here.  Either they're from Earth, or they're from someplace where they know an awful lot about Earth.  Any possibility that the package is from a parallel dimension or something like that?"
Silence reigned.
Doctor Schwartz spoke up this time.  "Why don't we just classify that possibility with 'alien origin' and get on with it?  They're semantically the same.  They can get here, but we can't get there.  Same thing."
Marty sighed in relief.
Colonel Flanders frowned into his coffee mug.  "The one underlying fact we can't run away from is that there's someone out there who knows more than a tad more about this stuff than we do, and we are at their mercy.  I think the question of origin is completely secondary, security-wise, than determining the motives of the sender.  I've said that all along, I think, but I kept getting drowned out by the sociology guys who claimed the worst risk was riots from New Agers, X-Files fans, and religious fanatics."
An elderly woman whose wobbly jowls and demeanor more than half made her look like a bulldog spoke next.  "We shtill hold forth that the main risksh are shochiological.  If there'sh to be an exhtraterreshtrial asshault, it would eventually have to take the form of a military action, which ish a schenario we can compute.  If the populash jusht shutsh itshelf down becaush it doeshn't know how to handle the ramificationsh, then we'll shlip back to the Shtone Age without a shot being fired.  Shivilizhation will collapsh, pure and shimple."
Colonel Flanders executed a neat trick of debate-club judo.  "Does anyone think that could possibly be a motive of the sending agents?"
Marty fielded this one, mostly as a favor to Flanders.  "The motive of the senders – or possible lack thereof – is one of the top reasons to think aliens are involved.  A human motivation would, we hope, be much more transparent.  The fact that we can waffle between 'failed marketing stunt' and 'the collapse of civilization' points to an originating psyche that is absolutely foreign to us.  The fact that we can't even rule out the Discordians means that it's either Discordians or aliens.  Pretty conclusively, in my mind."
Schwartz blinked, slowly.  "The phrase 'the Discordian Menace' just falls apart in my head, semantically.  Who could ever take the Erisian Liberation Front – or the Church of the SubGenius, for that matter – seriously?  They're just out to amuse themselves by screwing with people's heads, right?"
The President said, straightfaced, "It could just be part of their sinister plot to make us think that."  It mortified Marty that she couldn't tell whether he was kidding.
Bulldog-woman smacked the table with her notepad.  "Have we all gone 'round the bend?  Dishcordiansh?"
The President blew a breath through his lips, making them flap.  "It seems to me that if the senders wanted to destroy us biologically, they could have done so.  And according to the tech guys, anyone who can build a spaceship can build a fairly effective bomb using the same energy sources and control devices.  I think we can rule out 'destruction of civilization' as a motive."
"How about something more subtle?  In an imperialist war, the objective is to take over another country's resources, not pave them flat.  Could there be some form of subjugation in mind?"  Schwartz played with his coffee mug, absently sloshing a little onto the table.
Flanders put his mug down.  "It's certainly the case that a few of our old enemies, China in particular, tried to make us look really ridiculous in a number of U.N. sessions.  Spectacularly ridiculous.  Pitching a hoax like this that we would fall for would cost us a ton of credibility on the World Scene, impacting our economy and eventually our status as a superpower."
Just about everybody nodded.
"Maybe it's an ecological subjugation.  The junk DNA in the chickens is turning out to be mighty strange stuff."  Marty read through some of the scratching on her notepad, and her voice was a lot more hesitant-sounding than she liked.  "The chickens seem normal enough, but God alone knows what we would get from a mutation from one of them.  There weren't enough in the craft for a stable breeding population, so it would only be a matter of time before some of the stranger chunks of junk DNA started to express itself if we keep them to themselves.  It would be nice if we could get some computer time somewhere to try to puzzle out the sequences before that could happen."
The President wrinkled his forehead.  "How about we just wring their scrawny little necks before they give birth to any hypothetical monsters?  Or hatch them, or whatever.  If there's a serious risk."
"Well, Mr. President, I'd prefer to be certain there was a risk before we eliminated all possibility of ever understanding what was going on."  Marty's voice was somewhat stronger.  "Whatever is going on here, it's beyond anything we know how to do.  We should study it until we wring it dry.  You don't often get a gift like this, however stupid it makes us look."
Flanders grimaced.  "We don't have the time.  We really and truly have to have our official answers by tomorrow, Doctor Newsome.  China is all prepared to make things nasty for us if it looks even the slightest like we've alienated any of our buddies in the U.N.  Either we declare the Chicken Invasion to be alien technology, at which point we hand over nifty unsettling details to Europe and Russia and China and Japan – in addition to chickens and potatoes and granite, and take our lumps should any of them prove it undeniably to be a hoax – or we declare it to be a hoax ourselves and sock the whole mess away someplace until we can understand it – but that will all be much slower and lower profile than it is now.  Much less well-funded."
The President raised a hand.  "I say we call it a hoax.  I'm pretty sure it is one, anyway.  Chickens, potatoes, granite.  The world isn't going to believe – and neither am I – that you can build a flying saucer in your barn."
Flanders shrugged.  "I think I have to concur.  We can't afford to lose any edge that this thing could give us.  And if any threats from this are less than immediate destruction of American Society, it will buy us some time."
Bulldog woman merely nodded her head.  "The man on the shtreet isn't ready for the reality of either aliensh or mad schientishtsh."
Schwartz, the bald guy, and Marty all looked at one another.  Schwartz spoke.  "I think the cosmology is important here.  If mankind isn't alone out there, it could be pretty important to know.  Even for us, who seem to be more concerned about the spin than the facts we're spinning.  If there are aliens, then there might be better ones to look for than the ones that may have sent us the chickens.  There might also be worse ones that we need to be on our guard against."
"Nope.  It's a hoax.  We've decided.  The facts are in.  Chickens, potatoes, granite.  It was a ruse to make us blow a billion dollars and make us look stupid in front of all the other nations of the world."  The President seemed a tad pinker than usual, redness glowing through the gray in his hair.
Marty couldn't let that sit.  "We've – you've decided to call it a hoax, Mr. President, but that doesn't make it a hoax.  The fact that we're too stupid to understand what has happened to us can't simply be discarded.  Whatever has happened is likely to happen again – and again, and again – until we finally get it.  Maybe chickens are just a shot across the bow to these people.  Maybe the 'mad scientist' has another package to make us look stupid up his sleeve.  And I'm fairly convinced it's not a hoax!  And from the look in Dr. Schwartz's eye, I think he's also convinced that the concept for the potato computer is not from this planet.  There's something going on out there, and we need to know what it is – because it's screwing with us!  And it's not going to just stop!"
Colonel Flanders looked Marty in the eye.  Calmly but firmly he said, "You need to take a breath there, Dr. Newsome.  You've said some things worth listening to, just now, but I think it's time to let it go.  For now."
Schwartz looked wryly sympathetic, but said nothing.
"Time's up, folks.  From here on out, it's business as usual.  Like things were before the chickens came.  Colonel Flanders will send people round to collect all the materials for storage and later study.  I strongly recommend that no one does anything silly, like trying to keep samples and such for private study.  Security on this has to be airtight.  Or else."  The President got up from his chair.  "I want to hear everyone say 'Yes, Mr. President,' one more time.  Serious."
They all said it.
The President led the way out, speaking quietly to the Secret Service guy at the door.  When Marty, the last to leave, handed him her notepad, he whispered, "The President will be waiting to see you in the Oval Office in an hour.  We'll have a car waiting for you."

* * * * *

[20X6-04-27 11:54 AM, Oval Office, The White House]

The President shooed everyone else out of the room, including Secret Service.  Taking a seat on the corner of his desk, he opened a humidor and took out a cigar with no label.  After half a moment, he took out another and offered it to Marty.  She surprised herself and nodded, reaching for it.  The President punched a hole in the end with a small oblong metal thing that Marty didn't get a good look at – she relegated the object to the mysteries of high-end tobacco consumption, like esoteric pipe-smoking tools – and handed the cigar over.  When she took it, he tended to his own.  He lit them both with a plain, battered Zippo from his pocket.
"I'm glad you could make it, Doctor Newsome."
Marty took an experimental puff.  Even though three years had passed since her last cigarette, she had no trouble.  It tasted much better than it smelled – or maybe it was just the old nicotine-appreciating cheerleaders jumping up and down in her brain.
"These are really mild and smooth, but they get the job done.  And sometimes it's just a good idea to have a burning brand in your hand, some of the monsters you have to meet in here."  He took a puff or two himself, exhaling blue trails of smoke from the corner of his mouth.  "Holding a gun on people just isn't politic, but there's something comforting in knowing you could put a bastard's eye out with a quick lunge.  And there's something calming in knowing that other guy could do it to you, too, if you didn't pay good enough attention.  The Zen of the Old West."
"'An armed society is a polite society,'" Marty quoted.
"Exactly."
They both took another puff or two.
"You're the smartest person I know," he said.  "You think I'm an idiot.  But most smart people think most people they have ever met are idiots – and they're right, from their own point of view."
Marty nodded.
"I'm smarter than you think."
Marty nodded again.  "Probably."
"You're afraid because whoever sent the chickens is likely to be smarter than anyone else you know.  You don't like having your face rubbed in the fact that there's a faster gun than you out there, metaphorically speaking."
"That too," agreed Marty.
The President sat back down on the corner of his desk and gestured to a comfortable chair for Marty.  When she had taken a seat, he said, "You and I both know I'm wrong.  Required to be wrong, by the politics."
"If you say so, Hoss.  I'd like to think there's a way you could afford to be right, though."
"It's too late for that now.  If my best and brightest had been better and brighter, maybe.  But there's not much hope for me.  I'm stupid and too old to cure of that.  But I still want to understand why I'm wrong, why things worked out the way they did.  Why does it have to be so screwed up?"
"I don't know, Mr. President.  Why should we really expect anything to be other than it turned out?"
The President sucked on his cigar.  "You tell me."
Marty found a nearby ashtray, but found that she couldn't get the ash to drop off yet.  She settled back into her chair.  "The only thing that has ever been drilled into me successfully by my so-called first contact training is this:  alien means alien:  Never met it, don't know jack about it."  She took another puff before continuing.
"Here – try this on for size.  Let's say you're a superintelligent chicken.  Now go through all of your notes for the past few days.  Change every occurrence of the word 'chicken' or 'guinea fowl' or whatever to 'chimpanzee', which we might resemble in the eyes of someone who's not so familiar with the distinctions."
The President nodded, not caring too much about the ash falling onto his desk.
"Now, imagine this:  a spaceship lands and a bunch of chimps get out.  They hoot and holler and scream and huddle together.  One of them makes a break for it and gets creamed by a truck, because it has no idea what our idea of a truck or a road might be.  And the power source on their ship is a lump of common old plutonium.  Their computer is a bizarre confection of stones and metals and road tar.  You with me so far?"
The President nodded again.  "I think so."
"So these chimps have more in common with the animal slaves we've trained to tend our crops and refine our food pellets for us than they have with us civilized space-chickens."
"It's kinda far-fetched, don't you think?  Chimps aren't so alien.  We've been studying them for decades."
Marty protested.  "We don't think they're alien because we think we know them.  But it takes a hell of a lot more than a phrase-book for a human to get along in chimp society."  She coughed, gently, the smoke finally starting to get to her a little.  She took another drag on the cigar defiantly.
"None of it is too far-fetched," she continued.  "Granite is slightly radioactive due to a tiny amount of thorium in the mix, and the rest of it serves to dampen the reaction, like cadmium rods in a nuclear reactor.  Maybe that trickle is all their power system needs.  And as far as computing power is concerned, we don't do too badly on four pounds of meat.  All it takes is a system of inhibition and excitation.  Anthills have that, using individual ants instead of cells or transistors or neurons.  Why not a forty-pound network of starch cells?"
The President nodded sagely.  "If you say so."
"I say so, Hoss.  The only thing we know for absolute certain in science is that just about every hundred years we end up throwing away everything we thought we knew and replacing it with something that works ten times better.  There's no reason to think that it will ever stop, but somehow everyone thinks this time we have it right.  They always think that, all the way back to fire and the first wheel."
"So we're not even close, eh?"  The President wiped the cigar ash off the edge of his desk into an ashtray.
"Nope.  Anything more than a hundred years in advance of our science is gonna look like magic, like sheer goofiness."
"And if it's just goofiness?"
"That'll look like goofiness too.  It just won't work.  That spaceship flew, Mr. President."
"I think I like 'Hoss' better."
"Hoss."  Marty smirked in spite of herself and tapped about an inch-and-a-half of ash into her ashtray.  She noticed that it was heavy glass, and had the Presidential Seal in the bottom.
The President smiled.  "You get it out of your system yet?"
Marty smiled right back.  "Did you get it through your thick skull yet?"
"As much as is going to get through," he replied.  "I think it's time to kick you out so I can get to some serious off-the-clock drinking.  It's not normally my thing, but I usually leave the cigars alone, too."
Marty nodded.  A Secret Service agent came through the door as she stood up.  "This way, Doctor Newsome."
Still smiling, Marty breezed out the door.  She muttered something under her breath as she went.
"What did she just say?" the President asked.
"I wouldn't swear to it, but it sounded a lot like 'John Edward, my fat black ass.' "