Well, actually, he met me. Funniest thing - chance in a million, right? He landed here a while ago, he says; morphed himself into human form and spent a little time wandering around WalMart trying to find a representative Earthling. Says he gave up on that after about a day because too many people there looked familiar. Tried a few fast food joints after that, but he analyzed the food and figured people who were committing slow suicide weren't much of a bet either.
Finally, after a few weeks of trying to find a place with a decent cup of Turkish coffee, he saw me bent over a cup with what he says was a look of rapture. Says he knew I was the one right then and there.
It took him awhile to convince me he was the real deal, though; it wasn't until he told me that Erma Franklin recorded "Piece of My Heart" a year before Janis Joplin got her pipes on it that I gave in, because nobody knows that.
After this, he told me what the deal was: he said he was here to ask questions, find out what we're all about. Not to worry, he says; there's no invasion planned, no invitations to visit their home planet after giving us one of their cookbooks, or anything like that. He says they just like to visit other planets and see how the ideas work; says they always give the cure for the common cold to the guy that answers the questions. Sort of a "Thanks for your time" kind of thing.
Anyway, every now and then I'll tell you some of the stuff he asked about. And I can tell you, this guy's been around . . .
"So," he says that first time over coffee with the viscosity of 40 weight, "what about these things you call Ohio Class boats?" Funny thing to ask about first, what with him promising there wasn't going to be any invasion and all.
"You mean boomers?" I say.
"Mhmmm, I've heard them called that too."
"How'd you hear that?"
He stirs his Turkish with a little grin.
"Radio waves." He says it like he's tickled at having to state the obvious.
Okay, smarty-pants . . .
"Well, we call them Ohio Class because that was the name of the first one we built. All the boomers are named after states in the U.S.A."
"But why 'boomers'?"
"Well, "boom" is an onomatopoeia . . ."
"A what?"
I haven't quite worked up the nerve to tell this guy it's rude to interrupt; I have no idea what kind of heat he might be carrying.
"An onomatopoeia; it's a word that imitates a sound, and 'boom' is word we use to describe a big explosion".
I figure it's probably cheap insurance to use big words so he'll feel good about who's getting the cold cure.
"So we call the Ohio Class subs boomers because they have 24 nuclear missiles, and each one of those has 4 or 5 warheads. Well, they can actually carry twelve, but we have these things called 'treaties' where we tell other countries we'll do this if they'll do that, so they only have 4 or 5 now, depending on where the boomer is going."
"So'" he asks, "these things make big booms?"
I say, "You have no idea."
He got one of those funny smiles on his face again when I said that.
"But yeah, really big booms. One of the warheads goes off like 475,000 tons of dynamite, but that's only a part of it. The first part of the boom is what they call a heat flash. Sets everything thing for miles around on fire, except for the stuff it vaporizes. Then the shock wave pulverizes everything. The fires create a huge updraft; air comes rushing in from all around to take the place of the stuff that's rising and creates a bellows effect. Then there's the lingering effect of ionizing radiation. Getting nuked is real bad news." I say.
"How many of these things you got?"
"Well, there's 18 Ohios, but only 14 have the missiles I'm talking about. The other four have cruise missiles and things they call Harpoons."
"And how many missiles on each?"
"24."
"So that's 336 missiles with at least 4 warheads with maybe 475,000 of your tons of dynamite stuff each. That's 638,400,000 tons of boom stuff, right?"
I just say "Yeah." I figure having to pull out a pencil might make the cold cure thing look a little less desirable.
"Goodness," he says, "that's a lot of booming. How many people could die from all that?"
Things have gotten a little serious with this question, I admit.
"Billions."
"How many people on your planet?"
"About 7 billion."
"So you could kill almost everyone on the planet by pushing a few buttons?"
"Well, it's a little more involved than that, but yeah."
We sit quietly for a moment.
"Is that all you have?"
"What? Boom things? No."
"You have more than the ones on the boomers?"
"Yep. We have some on planes, too, and they can put them on those cruise missiles I mentioned."
"This seems pretty serious, you know."
"Yeah; I've thought about it from time to time. Not really a pleasant thing to think about."
"I should say not. So, you said there was more to killing almost everyone than pushing a few buttons. What does that mean?"
I explained the protocols involved with launching booms from a boomer, how there's a very precise sequence of steps that started with the president - I had to explain who that was - then the military aid who constantly carries a 40-pound titanium briefcase that we call the football - more explanation - then through a series of military personnel (he started getting kind of glassy eyed as I named them off so I quit) and finally to the submarine. Then, how that the Captain and the Executive Officer and the Weapons Officer all had to agree to key open the box that contained the launch codes they needed to fire the missiles and how there were keys that only the Captain and the Executive Officer had - a thing called the Two-Man Rule - that would override the safety mechanisms and allow the missiles to be launched.
"But," I said, "it all starts and ends with the president, in a way. If he says make the booms, there are booms."
He seemed pretty impressed with everything that kept us from accidentally baking St. Petersburg, though. We both agreed, after all, that we had never accidentally fired a missile. He did seem a little alarmed, though, when I told him that Bill Clinton - one of two of our most famous adulterers to occupy the office, and the only serial rapist that I'm aware of, which required a very lengthy explanation - lost the card with the launch codes for a few months and didn't tell the Pentagon.
He also seemed less impressed when I told him that 6 nuclear bombs once sat unattended for a total of 36 hours on the tarmacs of the Minot and Barksdale Air Force bases.
"Doesn't this worry you?" he said.
"Well, yes, but with us humans, we're always doing this prioritizing thing. We tend to deal with what's in our faces first, and the nuclear thing seems kind of far away, you know?"
He had no reply for that.
"Well then," he said, "from what you say, the last ones to make the decision to launch a boom missile are the Captain and the Executive Officer."
"Yep."
"They must be very special people, having that kind of responsibility put on them, and they've never failed. Would they really do it? Launch the booms?"
"Yes, they are special people, and yes, there's no reason to think they wouldn't."
"And kill perhaps billions?"
"Yes, but realistically, it's very unlikely we'd launch that many missiles."
"But it could happen if your president-thing said to launch that many?"
"Yes."
"So these Captains and Executive Officers, how do they get such an important job?"
"Well, it takes many years of training. There are all kinds of tests we give them, to make sure they're qualified. And they're always being tested to make sure they're okay. The process of determining who can be the Captain or Executive Officer - "XO" as we call them sometimes - is very, very involved. We know all about them - have to; there's too much at stake to give someone that kind of power and make a mistake. We take the process very seriously - spend millions of dollars on it, and it's proven to be money well spent."
"So you don't elect them."
"What?"
"You don't elect them - the captains and XOs."
"What do you mean, elect them? You mean like people voting, elect them?"
"Yes, that thing you mentioned earlier about the president person."
"No, of course not. That would be insane. There's no way of knowing what kind of person would be in control of the keys. The public doesn't know enough about the process to dependably pick the right kind of people for such a critical position. I . . . ."
He sat there for a moment or two looking at me. He watched as my mind took a turn.
Then he said -
"So, let me see if I understand you. You spend years and millions of dollars training and testing two people. You know all about them because you thoroughly check out their past and nothing is left to chance. They are all the way at the end of the chain in the process of making booms, and they only control one boomer, and you say how outrageous it would be to let the people elect them because the choice could be disastrous. And yet that is exactly what you do when you choose the one man that you say controls not just one boomer, but all of them."
I was still sitting there for a while after my new friend left. He told me he'd see me later. Maybe I should have made the point that the situation I described wasn't my idea; failing to do so could jeopardize my cold cure fortune.
Somehow, I don't think he would have been much impressed with my defense.
