I didn't chime in. I just let them debate the issue, as if we were all back in our high school's cafeteria, arguing some trivial facet of pop culture over cardboard pizza. This was why I'd come here, I realized--to get the opinion of my two most trusted friends, gauge their reaction, and see if their conclusions mirrored my own. And in a way, they did. They seemed to be just as confounded by all of this as I felt, and yet were also just as intrigued by the mystery as my father.
I checked the time. It was still running out. And I realized that I'd already made my decision.
"I appreciate you talking through this with me, fellas," I told them. "Now I've got a phone call to make."
I raised my wrist and activated my QComm. Both of my friends' eyes lit up.
"What the holy sweet hell is that?" Diehl asked. "A tricorder?"
Finn Arbogast answered after the third ring, and his smiling face appeared in high-definition video on my QComm's display. Judging by the view behind him, he was sitting in some sort of command bunker, with giant display screens bolted to its thick concrete walls displaying an icon-littered map of various regions of the world.
"Zack!" he said. "I'm glad to see that you're alive! You and your father were reported missing in action just after you took out that Disrupter. Congratulations, by the way. I watched the whole thing!"
"Then you know that my father just risked his life to save us all," I said. "So I think you owe him a favor, don't you?"
He smiled uneasily. I waited for him to ask about my father, but he said nothing.
"Did my father ever tell you his theory, about the Europans' true motives?"
His smiled vanished and he let out a heavy sigh.
"You mean his theory that this invasion is all a ruse?" Arbogast said. "That the Europans orchestrated this whole conflict as some sort of test for humanity? Yes, I know all about it. I'm sorry, Lieutenant. Your father is a great man--a hero. And we all owe him a huge debt. But all these years at war have addled his brain. He's become delusional."
"No, he hasn't," I replied, too forcefully. "I've seen the evidence myself, when we were going up against the Disrupter in Antarctica--it dropped its shield on purpose. They let us destroy it! Look at the footage--you can see it happen for yourself!"
He didn't respond, but his eyes shifted evasively. He looked as if he spent most of his time in front of a computer instead of with people, and he wasn't used to being interrogated or put on the spot like this.
"I don't see the point in this conversation," he said. "We debated all of this with your father years ago, and I'm not going to go through it again now with you, kid. I mean, look around you! Our enemy's motives are obviously no longer in question!" He pointed to the giant map of the world behind him. "The Europans just killed over thirty million people--and that was just the first wave of their invasion. The second wave is arriving just over an hour from now. So if you'll excuse me, I need to prepare for it--"
"Sir, if you'll just let me speak to someone who--"
Before I could say another word, he ended the call.
I lowered my phone and turned to look at my friends.
"Okay," Diehl said, leaning forward. "That was a giant ball of fail. What now?"
I smiled and held up my QComm. All the names I'd just lifted from Finn Arbogast's phone were listed there. I scrolled down to highlight the one labeled Armistice Council Members--Conference.
"He already gave me all the help I need," I said.
"You hacked his future phone?" Diehl said. "How? You can barely use apps!"
"If you must know," I said, "That super-hot mech driver I met at Crystal Palace showed me how to do it. She also kissed me, FYI."
"Really?" Cruz said, laughing. "Is she from Canada? The Niagara Falls area, perhaps?"
"I want to know if they boned in zero gravity," Diehl said. "Spill it, Lightman."
I ignored their questions and called my father on his QComm. It rang and rang. As I continued to let it ring, I grabbed Diehl's phone off his desk to dial my mother's number--only to discover that it was already programmed into his contacts as "Pamela Lightman."
"Why do you have my mom's number saved in your phone?"
"Oh, you know why, Stifler," Cruz muttered through from his video window, his voice dripping with innuendo--this was his version of "that's what she said."
"I've had your mom's number in my phone since I was twelve, psycho!" Diehl said. "You have my mom's number in your phone, too. Get over yourself."
I nodded, then shook my head vigorously. "Sorry," I said. "Sorry, man."
I put his phone to my other ear. My mother's number rang and rang, too, while my father's continued to ring in the other. A minute passed. Neither of them picked up. Probably not good. I wondered if my dad's condition had gotten worse and she'd decided to take him to a hospital after all.
After Crom knows how many rings, I finally gave up and canceled both calls. Then I pulled up Arbogast's contact for the Armistice Council again and tried to make a decision.
I badly wanted to have my father on the line before I called them: The Armistice Council would be made up of world-renowned scientists or EDA commanders or both, and they probably wouldn't listen to some eighteen-year-old kid. But my father was probably unconscious, and the clock was ticking down. What choice did I have?
I summoned my courage and tapped the Armistice Council contact on my QComm. I watched as the device dialed five different numbers all at once and then connected all of them simultaneously. Then my QComm switched into "conference mode," and my display screen was divided into five separate windows, each containing live video of a different person, each of whom appeared to be in a separate location.
There were four men and one woman, and all of them looked familiar to me, but I only recognized two of them by name--the two men whose faces appeared in the last two video windows on my screen. The first was Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the second was Dr. Stephen Hawking, slumped in his motorized wheelchair. I heard Cruz and Diehl gasp behind me just as my own jaw dropped open like a castle drawbridge.
Dr. Hawking spoke up first. I saw the familiar heads-up display for an ATHID on the computer monitor behind him--it appeared that Dr. Hawking had been helping defend Cambridge from its alien siege when he answered the call.
He spoke using his famous computer-generated voice, which now, ironically, reminded me of Chen's translator instead of the other way around.
"Who are you?" he asked. "And how did you get this number?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but no words came out. I'd just recalled the names of the other three scientists on the call--I'd seen each of them interviewed on countless science programs and documentaries. The Asian gentleman was