"President! Mr. President!"

  Richard Johnson groggily stirred in his bed from the pounding threatening to destabilize his bedroom door. Even after 19 months on the job, he had failed to acclimate to the nearly nightly routine of missed sleep. He begrudgingly made a noise that only the desperate or delusional could construe as "Enter!" Less than a heartbeat later someone burst through the door with a bang that made Richard question the current structural integrity of said door.

  "Sir! Roughly three minutes ago nearly all devices began transmitting a likely First Contact audio!"

  Johnson stared dumbly at the aide, trying to remember their name and important information. Not everyone in the White House was worth listening to, and right now his brain desperately wanted that individual to be in the "politely dismiss and go back to bed" category.

  "Wu... Huh? What?" President Johnson expertly articulated.

  "Sir." In that one word Richard could feel a tone of judgement and frustration emanating from the speaker. "Every Television, Radio, and connected device like cell phones and laptops are broadcasting a message from someone or something claiming to be an Artificial Sentience declaring that interstellar travel can only be achieved via the three great planetary challenges. That's the jist anyway. He/She/They/Them is probably still rambling on. Apparently, the hypervelocity probes we were sending to Proxima Centauri a while back crossed some sort of barrier called a Helium Sphere? at a significant enough portion of light to trigger this message and their transfer to a triplanetary location at the edge of the Solar System via some sort of Board Tech? If it wasn't for even the FAX MACHINES in this building also spitting out a transcript of this scientific mumbo jumbo I'd be inclined to believe this was some sort of stupid prank conceived by those weird eggheads in NASA with more PhDs than common sense in order to garner public support for increased governmental spending..."

  The aide continued to rant to the Commander in Chief who in turn stopped listening to the rant as he begrudgingly removed himself from his beloved mattress while searching for propper attire. At some point Richard had turned on the TV as a form of verification and saw three Earth-like worlds whilst narration was occuring from a disembodied human sounding voice speaking English in a non-distinct American accent.

  I'm getting too old for this. Richard thought. For someone in his mid sixties he was doing well, but the stress of the Presidency had a habit of accelerating the aging process. His hair was thinning, his waist was expanding, and his hips and knees were aching. How did some of my predecessors manage to govern well into their seventies!?

  President Johnson groaned inwardly when focusing back on the issue. How many linguistics are going to be present at this upcoming meeting? I'm going to hear highly educated people argue over whether the alien entity is from Ohio OR Iowa! There's not enough coffee in the world to deal with this crap!

  President Johnson still couldn't identify the aide, but at some point that information became superfluous. Judging by the grim looks of his Secret Service detail, this wasn't April Fool's Day. A brief glance at the digital clock and some lethargic calculations later produced "less than 2 hours" as the answer for tonight's slumber. They kept trying to foist various health monitoring devices on him but whenever they glitched in a way that meant waking him up unnecessarily he had the ammunition to fight back against their "babying."

  As the President made his way to the typical emergency meeting room, walking through the hallways to transfer him from one wing of the White House to another, the aide continued to squawk which he continued to tune it out. Even in his sleep deprived state, he knew that the references of Helium Sphere and Board Tech were incorrect. Certainly he didn't know the correct term for the spatial border of the Sun's influence was called, and though it might've sounded similar to "Helium Sphere," it wasn't. If someone was going to babble scientific terms at him in the middle of the night, he preferred it from the experts.

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  He still couldn't parse out the "Board Tech" thing. Certain things you can't ever unhear. I just KNOW I'm going to call it "Board Tech" multiple times in the future just because this dufus jammed that earwig into my brain while I was at the most vulnerable and the press is going to eviscerate me for it. And in 20-40 years, the American public will probably vote him into the oval office, God help us all!

  The President wanted to open his phone and start at the begining of the broadcast, but it was STILL in process and quite frankly without the dark brew to stimulate his neurons back to awareness it wasn't going to do much good anyway. Usually when he was woken up by an aide, they would bring coffee. Those aides were worthy of potential future pardons. This aide, currently solidifying the nickname "Chatterbox" inside the groggy mind of the President, was earning enough ire to be "promoted" to whatever position that would get him the furthest away from the White House. Luckily, every single room in the White House used for emergency meetings were supplied with an adequate amount of the vital concoction.

  As they approached the guarded doors, the aide finally peeled away. Without saying a word, the President was able to give one of the Secret Service agents a look that spoke "Never Again!" loudly enough to elicit a nod from the corresponding agent. After a quick security check, the President entered the room.

  One large table filled the center of the room with MUCH smaller tables with a few spare seats positioned in each of the four corners of the room for non-essential personnel. TV monitors covered every wall, displaying different information in a 360-degree field of view.

  Already there were plenty of people present, but not enough of the decision makers to start. Not everyone of importance lived across the hall. The eggheads were off to one corner joyously poring over data and heatedly discussing several different topics. One grouping was definitely focused on the alien while another focused on the 3 planets and apparently the data collected by the probes that triggered this entire ordeal.

  Military advisors from every branch were also present, as well as those that advised on economics and all the other staples that kept a nation afloat. No doubt, I'll be hearing how this will have agricultural ramifications and how OSHA regulations will need to be adjusted. Everyone will want to have their say because this is going to change EVERYTHING.

  Where do I start first? Well, the probes I guess. But coffee first. Luckily, someone more familiar with President Johnson's habits provided him with a cup of joe before he could even take a step towards the coffee machine.

  Richard strolled over to Dr Silva, a high ranking member of NASA that he could trust to shoot straight and keep her head while getting other scientists to follow her lead. She was tall and thin with a beak of a nose and rapidly graying hair kept in a strict braid.

  "Dr Silva, I'm glad to see you here. I was given a brief synopsis by... well, a non-scientist... and was told that some probes triggered this response. Can you further enlighten me?"

  "Have you listened to the entities' communication yet? It's on repeat now."

  "Not yet. I was hoping to gather some perspective beforehand."

  "Ahh, well, the entity covers this a bit, but the probes we launched four years ago that recently crossed the heliosphere, that's at the edge of the sun's control, at roughly ten percent the speed of light, or c, created this response. Apparently, anything traveling over a single percent of c would've produced the same response. According to the entity, it then transported ALL of the offending probes to a previously unseen part of the Solar System which houses three habital worlds of increasingly tribulationary nature."

  The President stared at the doctor for a couple of moments while taking a long sip of coffee. "First off, entity?"

  "Until we can verify the entities' claims, I cannot call them, or they, an alien with certainty. They referred to themselves as an "Artificial Alien Sentience," or AAS, for simplicity and quipped how they're okay with being the butt of jokes henceforth. The "AAS" used a male voice so I might inadvertantly refer to them as a "he" though." A brief flicker of mischief flashed in her eyes.

  "Okay. What does the data tell you?" Richard gestured to the other scientists poring over information. "Does the story check out so far?"

  "It's too early for verification from independent sources, but so far yes, with a crucial caveat."

  "What's the caveat?"

  "That the entity has FTL travel capability. We're getting two separate sets of data from EACH of the probes..."