Second contact, p.11
Second Contact, page 11
part #2 of Not Alone Series
FRIDAY
C minus 73
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
With Henry and Clark at their respective workplaces, both motivated by their shared need to do something productive rather than any pressing need for money, Emma and Dan sat in the McCarthys’ living room talking openly about an offer she had received overnight.
Emma had awoken to dozens of missed calls on her phone, all of them from Timo Fiore. Unlike Dan, who had once again spent most of the night awake and paying too much attention to the news, Emma was unaware of Timo’s problem until he finally got hold of her.
At that point, his pleas for assistance were immediate as he told her of his inability to deal with the sudden and massive flood of negative media attention that had recently come his way.
On the back of some innocuously intended comments during his Reciprocity announcement, Timo explained that he now stood accused in the court of social media, with the charges ranging from cultural chauvinism to intentional insensitivity. The story of the outrage had grown arms and legs in the few hours since the first posts went viral, and Emma could hear in Timo’s voice that he was personally hurt by the criticisms more than he was concerned about their effect on his project.
The chief complaint centred on Timo’s use of humanity’s move “from mud huts and igloos to cities full of skyscrapers” as an example of civilisational progress; the specific charges, he gloomily relayed, were of wilfully erasing the experience of everyone who didn’t live in a Western city and of stigmatising the living arrangements of millions of people. His insistence on using only English in written captions and communications was another easy target for those with time on their hands and axes to grind.
Timo had made no public comment as yet, but insisted to Emma in a weary tone that he intended no cultural bias. He cited the fact that he included several Emirati buildings in his example materials, despite his well known dislike of the governments and building practices behind them, and said that he did so because the buildings were technically impressive and that all he was looking for were the best examples of human construction. Emma let him talk for a while without interrupting.
He had also faced criticism for his refusal to leave Reciprocity’s plaque-design process to a truly open vote, and particularly for using the word “herd” in reference to the general public. This was indefensible, the critics claimed, and “a clear sign of Fiore’s elitist detachment from reality.”
Eventually, Emma spoke. She told Timo that the best course of action was to do and say nothing, explaining that no one beyond the fringe of the fringe was truly upset by his comments; the cookie-cutter headlines claiming that he was “under fire” and “being blasted” for comments that had “sparked fury” were nothing more than the dying echoes of desperate clickbait-peddling media outlets. Unlike in the bygone days when news outlets survived by earning repeat custom through quality content, Emma told him, the new model’s goal was to generate clicks at any cost.
“It’s like an arms-race of who can push these clickbait headlines furthest,” she said. “Today it’s just your turn to be the target.”
Timo was quiet for several seconds. “You know I trust your instincts,” he eventually replied. “But this feels different. I have said some foolish things in my time, Emma… far more foolish than this. I have also collected a lot of enemies over the years, some earned and some not, but no one has ever thrown these kinds of accusations at me. I have never seen a reaction like this. The articles are calling for apologies, boycotts, you name it. It’s hysteria!”
“Exactly,” Emma said, “it is hysteria. So why take it personally? Aside from a tiny tiny tiny handful of people who have picked this as the thing they’re going to be offended about today, most of what you’re seeing is purely driven by so-called news sites that make money every time someone clicks a link. That’s all it is. I know it’s difficult for you right now, but it’s a pretty simple thing to understand and this isn’t something that’s going to last.”
“My media team at Fiore Frontiere are telling me that no one had mentioned any of this until around six hours ago,” Timo replied, his tone calmer than before but his concerns not yet abated. “And apparently it happened in one sudden moment: a barrage of identically worded posts went out from various accounts on various platforms. Then, as soon as the ball was rolling, the new accounts which posted the first comments were deleted. I think Godfrey and his people did this, and I want proof.”
“It might have been astroturfed outrage,” Emma conceded, with strong emphasis on the ‘might’, “and it definitely wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen something like that. But seriously, Timo, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter what started it. I’ve seen this situation a million times with a million clients and my advice is always the same: turn the other cheek. I know it’s hard to keep perspective when people are throwing accusations at you, but honestly… no one really cares about this stuff. Ninety-nine percent of people will roll their eyes at it, but they still click the headlines. That’s the new game: the gutter-dwelling ‘journalists’ write the stupidest headlines they can, and then regular people get annoyed at what they think other people are offended by, but no one except a tiny handful of people were even offended in the first place! I’ve had to think about this stuff a lot because social media changed the PR game just as I was learning it. I don’t know how else to put it except to say that saying nothing is the quickest way out. Seriously: the only way to win is to not play.”
“We can’t let them win,” Timo protested. “We can’t let him win.”
“Timo… they’re not winning anything. They’re crawling around in the mud and trying to pull you down there with them. You’re taking this personally because you’re a nice guy and you’re not the things they’re calling you, but what I’m telling you is that no one actually thinks you are. Just stay dignified and it’ll blow over.”
What had become clearer and clearer to Emma with each of Timo’s comments was that he really was more upset by the personal nature of the accusations than he was concerned with the effect they might have on his Reciprocity project.
But while she had been trying to comfort him, Emma had also been scanning the most recent related articles. Only one development troubled her in relation to its possible effect on Timo’s public image, but it troubled her a great deal.
Already, barely missing a beat, John Cole had performed an uninvited and unwelcome leap to Timo’s defence with a series of typically brash and deliberately inflammatory assertions.
“Reciprocity is a message from civilisation to civilisation,” Cole had said in a short televised interview. “And what the thought police who have been badgering poor Timo have to accept is that the sender is Western civilisation. We want to show skyscrapers, athletes and physicists; not mud huts, cannibals and witchdoctors. If people have a problem with that, I don’t know what to tell them.”
As Emma told Timo after reading this, John Cole was the only part of this problem that wouldn’t fade away on its own. Jack Neal had clearly advised Cole that latching on to the Reciprocity controversy was a good way of leeching some of Timo’s goodwill with the public, and Emma knew that the skunk-like taint they could leave on Timo was something that had to be actively dealt with.
“The good news is that we can take care of Cole once and for all on Sunday,” she said. “Jack is going to be on the Focus 20/20 panel as a proxy, so we’ll deal with him then. And if anything comes to light about Godfrey being behind this little outrage storm, we’ll have the chance to take care of him in New York, too. You can let your people look into that, just as long as they don’t make any strong comments until they run it all by us. And in the meantime… don’t let this run you down, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow in Denver when your plane touches down.”
“About that…” Timo said. “How would you feel about coming back with me to Italy for a few days after the show on Sunday? I have some important press engagements to take care of before my move to Colorado, and they would be much easier if you were here.”
“You’re moving here?”
“Of course. Fiore Frontiere isn’t going to run itself, and the old IDA building was the obvious choice for our global headquarters. I would say ‘you can’t buy that kind of symbolism’, but it turns out that you can.”
Emma was quiet for several seconds.
“I know you don’t like flying, Emma, so you must know that I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need you. It will only be for a few days, and I would be delighted if Dan wants to come with you.”
And so, minutes after taking Timo’s call, Emma had ended it without committing either way.
She brought the offer to Dan as soon as Henry and Clark were gone for the day, and much to her surprise he wasn’t totally against the idea of her going.
“You can come with me, too,” she said. “That would be better.”
To her even greater surprise, Dan was totally against this suggestion. When she asked why, his answer — “I have to be here in case something happens” — only led to another obvious question:
“Like what? What do you think might happen that you’d need to be here for?”
Dan shrugged. “Another bolide, maybe. Or maybe something more direct if they finally plant the fourth plaque. They might call me somewhere, and I doubt it would be in Italy.”
“What makes you think they might call you somewhere? Have you felt anything since Kerguelen?” Emma asked with an interest bordering on concern. “You know, in your neck?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just a strong hunch. But you don’t have to worry about anything… you can leave all my fancy birthday presents wrapped somewhere I can find them, and Clark will be here if I need help with anything. And Tara will be here, too, right?”
After laughing at Dan’s comment about the birthday presents, Emma’s expression turned to stone. “I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that last part.”
“I didn’t mean I’m going to tell her,” Dan said with a slight smile. “I like Tara too much to dump this on her, even if I wanted to. Clark will be here if I need help with anything like that… I just meant that Tara will be here, too, so it’s not like I’ll need to keep a close eye on your house while you’re gone.”
“Ugh,” Emma sighed, leaning back in thought. “I hadn’t even thought of that. When Tara is home alone, someone does need to keep an eye on things. I’ll ask Clark. And I swear, if she tries to have any parties while I’m gone…”
“So you are going?”
“If you’re sure you’re okay with that? It’s not like I’m desperate to go or anything; I wouldn’t go for free and I wouldn’t go at all if it wasn’t to help Timo, but if you think that you might need help here then obviously I—”
“It’s okay,” Dan said. “Go.”
“Definitely?”
Dan nodded slowly. “I will miss having you around, but Timo is on our side. Even though he doesn’t know everything, he’s always been on our side. If we can help him — if you can help him — I think we should. Remember how much he helped us?”
“Of course I do. But if you do need help with anything, whatever it is, day or night, you call me, okay? My phone is always on and you’ll always get straight through. Day or night.”
“Day or night,” Dan said. “Understood.”
Emma smiled. “And for the record: I’ll miss you having me around, too.”
A few seconds later, she returned Timo’s call and told him she was in.
C minus 72
Ford Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan was grateful when a mundane phone call from Clark broke up his afternoon, consisting as it had of staring at his wall-length research board in the hope that the missing piece of the Kerguelen puzzle would flow from his mind in a flash of inspiration.
It hadn’t.
With Clark still at work and Emma now home after a short trip to the city but apparently not answering his calls, Clark asked Dan to pop next door and pass on an invitation. It came from Phil Norris; upon hearing that Emma had only one more night in Birchwood before heading to New York and ultimately Italy with Timo Fiore, he had kindly invited everyone to the bar for some free drinks to see her off.
Dan agreed to pass on the message. He waited until four o’clock, when Emma’s usual at-home workdays came to an end, then began the fifteen-second walk from his home to hers. He had been counting down the minutes until four o’clock even before Clark’s call, keen to catch up with her for what would be one of the last times in a while.
Dan didn’t take any notice of the old blue car parked right outside; subconsciously he knew that Emma’s sister Tara was due back in town soon, and he wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to notice that it didn’t look shiny or expensive enough to be something she would be seen dead driving.
He knocked twice on the door, as he always did, and was surprised by how quickly Emma answered. He was also surprised by her noticeably flustered demeanour.
“Hey,” she said, trying to force an upbeat smile. “What’s up?”
After saying a few words about the message he was supposed to pass on for Clark, Dan noticed something over Emma’s shoulder: a young man of around his age, sitting on the couch in a well filled-out black muscle shirt.
“Is something wrong?” Emma asked.
“I’ll, uh… it was nothing,” Dan replied, backing away. “I didn’t know you were busy.”
Emma watched in confusion for a few seconds as he turned around and began to walk away. She then glanced back to the couch and understood. “Dan, wait!”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Really, you don’t have to—”
“He’s here for Tara.”
Dan stopped. “Oh. I didn’t know she’d arrived.”
“Come on inside,” Emma said. Her expression, having gone from confusion to amusement as the misunderstanding developed, quickly turned sour. “She hasn’t arrived yet, and that’s the whole thing; apparently she told this guy she’d be here an hour ago and that I’d be happy to let him inside if she was late, which sure sounds like her.”
Dan grinned slightly. From the few times he’d met Tara, that did sound like her.
Emma leaned in to whisper before they stepped inside. “But don’t worry, I searched and scanned him.”
“For what?” Dan whispered back.
“Bugs, obviously. I took his phone, too. You do understand why we can’t let random people into our houses, right?”
Dan nodded, pretending he would have been so thorough. He made a mental note to make sure that he was next time, not that he ever had visitors.
As soon as Dan stepped inside, the young man on the couch leapt to his feet.
“Holy shit, it’s Dan McCarthy!”
“Sure is,” Dan replied. He then looked at the man’s outstretched hand and tried to act like he was familiar with the odd angle of a sports-style handshake.
“I’m Jay. My sister loves you, dude. I mean, I like you too, but, you know… not like that! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know, I just mean, like, it’s…”
“Relax,” Dan said. He himself had turned into a bumbling or dumbstruck idiot on a few occasions when he met people he knew from the TV — his meeting with Richard Walker during a school trip to the IDA building around eight years earlier jumped to mind as a good example — but it still didn’t really compute in his mind that he was now the person from the TV whose presence drove other people to either freeze up or ask for autographs and photos. “So how long have you known Tara?” he asked, trying to settle the poor guy’s nerves.
Jay hesitated and scanned the room for a clock. “Probably like six or seven hours,” he said.
“And she invited him into my house,” Emma said to Dan, as though Jay wasn’t there. “And you wonder why I give her a hard time?”
“I can leave…” Jay said.
Emma motioned with her hand for him to sit back down. “It’s not your fault; I didn’t mean that. Besides, you’ve already waited this long.”
“Thanks,” Jay said. He then turned back to Dan. “So, uh, my sister would kill me if she knew I was here and didn’t ask this. Do you remember her? Debbie Butcher?”
“Debbie Butcher?” Dan echoed. “Of course I remember her, she was in almost all of my classes! If she’s your sister then I think I remember you, too. Jay Butcher… you played football, right? You were only two years below me.”
Jay’s eyes lit up and he looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head in disbelief before talking more to himself than anyone else: “I cannot believe Dan McCarthy knows who I am.”
“Why did you cut your hair?” Dan asked. “I would have known you straight away with the long hair.”
Emma gently pulled Dan’s arm, encouraging him towards the relative privacy of the kitchen.
“So do you want Debbie’s number?” Jay asked.
“Yeah, Dan,” Emma said, teasing him with a parroting tone and a gentle elbow in the back. “Do you want Debbie’s number?”
“Oh, shit… sorry,” Jay said. “I didn’t know you guys were…. yeah. My bad.”
Dan and Emma looked at each other silently for several seconds. Dan didn’t know what she was thinking, but he guessed it was the same as him and that she didn’t want to be the one to shout “we’re not” in a way that could only offend the other.
“Do you want to say it or should I?” she whispered through a smile, confirming that she was indeed thinking more or less the same thing.
Dan tipped his head forward slightly.
