Von Neumann’s War

Your presence at a meeting of the utmost urgency and importance is requested. The meeting will be held at the Sparkman Center auditorium on the Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, this Friday. We apologize for the short notice, but again, this is a matter of extreme urgency.

The meeting will be at the Top Secret level. If you are not cleared to this level, arrangements are being made to have you cleared in the interim. Please be certain to fill out the forms enclosed and appropriate visit request paperwork and fax it to the number given below, immediately.

Initial attendance is voluntary; however, all those attendees who decide to remain for the briefing will be reimbursed for their time and expenses. Direct procurement opportunities are also possible.

Sincerely,

General Daniel Riggs Dr. Sidney Byron

Commanding General Director

United States Army NASA Marshal Space Flight Center

Redstone Arsenal, Alabama Huntsville, Alabama

No invitations were turned down.

* * *

The auditorium, on the other hand, posed a problem since it was only rated for Top Secret level briefings and not for Sensitive Compartmented Information or Special Access Programs. A three-day waiver was authorized by the NRO and the Joint Chiefs, provided that the building was monitored for eavesdropping sensors before and after each meeting session and only individuals to be briefed into Neighborhood Watch were allowed into the building housing the auditorium during the briefings. A security specialist team swept the building for transmitters. General Riggs ordered three days of administrative leave for all of the employees who worked in the Sparkman Center building. No cover was created but if your name was not on the invitation list, then you did not get into the building those three days.

* * *

Dr. Tom Powell, Alan Davis, and Dr. Reynolds stood on the stage of the stadium-seating-style auditorium as the final attendees of the meeting filtered into the seats in the upper rows. Armed security guards stepped into the room at each door and pulled the doors closed behind them. Roger nodded to Tom and Alan and the two of them left the stage and sat down in the first row.

“Thank all y’all for coming today. I see a lot of familiar faces here and a few I don’t recognize. For those of you I haven’t met before, I’m Dr. Roger Reynolds with the local space group office for Space Defense Systems Research, Incorporated. What I would like for everybody to do first is to read the form on the cover of the sealed folders in front of you. Take five minutes and read the nondisclosure agreement carefully and, if you agree to it, sign it.” Roger stood at the podium patiently for five minutes.

“Now, if anybody did not sign the form in front of you please leave now.”

Nobody stood up.

“Okay, from this point on every person present in this room has indicated that they have signed the documents,” Roger said. “It, legally, doesn’t matter if you have or not; you’re now covered by the security regulations of those documents and the penalties laid out for failure to comply with the security requirements. Very well, open the folders and turn to the first page. Let’s have the first slide on the screen please.

“So here is an overview of what we plan to put together in less than five months.” Roger cleared his throat as the first PowerPoint slide, a picture of a satellite, appeared on the multiple big screens behind him.

“The reason you are all here is that Mars is being changed by something unnatural. Its surface reflectance albedo has been changed enough so that in the past year these changes can now be detected via small commercial telescopes. We have no idea what is causing this phenomenon, but we suspect that it’s not a natural occurrence,” Roger emphasized.

“Our purpose here is to find out what is going on there and to find out fast. We can speculate all we want, but without recon intel we have no means of truly knowing what’s going on there.” Roger paused and cleared his throat and scanned the darkened auditorium for reactions. The reactions from most of the room were guarded.