"There's no way to stop the Swedes now, they know more than we do at this point. Exchange of information is a necessity here anyway, bottom line." In a planetary crisis, or impending one, Mike was thinking essentially of the idea that national agendas were less important, but he'd always been an internationalist. However, the political chaos leading up to consensus was a thing that he was keen to manage. They had no idea when they'd be doing more than talking to a seemingly-automated probe, but they knew it was coming. It could be a century or more, or it could be tomorrow.

"The alien agenda at this juncture is hard to gauge on the basis of that communication, but we should be prepared for any number of scenarios," He almost referenced "To Serve Man" but realized that someone would leak that and create chaos in the press. It was a controversial story right now, and in an era of heightened fear, he didn't want to add fuel to that fire.

So Mike Gerard did the smart thing and sipped his coffee in order to gain a moment to phrase a reply, rather than just respond.

The public conversation was already influenced by sci-fi reading; Mike never thought he'd be reading sci-fi books in this job, but he'd had a few revelations courtesy of reading for something besides entertainment. A couple of these novels discussed the impact of inability to communicate and how that touched off tragedies. "We will need to feel out a even a friendly contact very carefully. I think the Russians will appreciate that mindset," he added without mentioning the Yeltsin years. The dissolution of the old Soviet order gave rise to something less than promised and the Russians were wary of a game changer now, "But if I were asking questions of that probe, I'd want to know a ballpark on travel time. If the probe is sticking to technical topics, then we should query about interstellar travel times, perhaps even ask it how it got here so quickly, and how quickly the probe's information will get back to the other side."

The President nodded at Mike, but then glanced over the table and then back to Bill, his coffee untouched, "Well, this is what you get for double-dipping, Bill," he said wryly, "How do you feel about convincing the Swedes to broker this information to the Russians through us? Also, I want to suggest to our friends in Sweden that our priority is to obtain data and that we are willing to combine resources on a joint scientific task force to that effect -- we should have a sit down with Dr. Feinberg," director of the National Science Foundation, "and Bob Gordon," NASA director, "and figure out what to propose to the Swedes in terms of collaboration."

"Any thoughts on that, Bridgette? I think Bill should keep the dialogue going with Russia, but I think you might need to take a plane trip to Sweden." AJ's intent here was obvious, rapprochement between Scandinavia, close to the Baltic states and wary, and Russia, which was scared shitless like the rest of them. And, calculating it, he knew that sending a woman leader to spearhead would play over well in that region.