A spaceship lands in Washington D.C. A lone spaceman and his robot come from the ship, but, after an unfortunate accident, the spaceman makes no more official public appearances. Disguised, he explores the city, trying to make a decision regarding the fate of the Earth and meets a young mother and her son. Is he savior or destroyer? (Yes, this is a re-mix – with a Rumbelle twist - of the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still).

Other characters include Baefire (with a remix of family relationships for this story), Dr. Whale, David Nolan, Leroy, Cora Mills, and a special guest appearance by Dr. Nicholas Rush.

CHAPTER ONE

Arrival

Information is not knowledge. - Albert Einstein

She'd been at her job entirely too long, her eyes were stinging from looking at the computer screen.

Her office was in a part of the facility affectionately known as The Dungeon. There were no windows and only a round wall clock to give her any sense of the passage of time. When she had last checked the time, it was a little after two. Now, it was well past six thirty.

"Oh darn," Belle French, cybrarian extraordinaire, had, yet again, completely lost track of time, buried in the back basement of the Smithsonian, cataloguing, cataloguing and, yes, cataloguing.

She quickly turned off her computer, rubbed her eyes and gathered up her lightweight rain-jacket and her pocketbook. She clicked off the ever-humming overhead florescent bulbs that lit her corner of the basement and began to make her way through the maze of over-stuffed, towering gray metal shelf units. Someone had already turned off the other main lights, so she was having to find her way relying on the small emergency lights along the baseboards and her memory. Never comfortable with the rickety service elevator that allowed access to the back basement, she instead went to the stairs where she would have a signal and turned on her phone.

There were eight messages.

Seven were from Gary.

"Belle, call me." "Belle, call me." "Belle, call me now." "Belle, why haven't you called me?" "Belle, it's really important you call me now." "Belle, I need to hear from you right away." Belle, what the hell is going on there? Why haven't you called me?"

The last one came from her son, Bae. "Mom, do you know what all is going on? I'm really concerned about you. Give me a call when you can."

She called her son.

"Oh, great!" Bae breathed into the phone. "You're all right."

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" Belle's thoughts immediately went into hyper-drive. Had the Smithsonian been a target of terrorists? She worked in the far, far basement underground. The entire front of the building could be hit by a megaton bomb and she wouldn't have a clue.

"The spaceship," Bae explained.

"The what?"

"The spaceship. The one that landed on the mall by the museum. The great big white round spaceship that is on every single TV channel. It's been there since noon," Bae gave her more information.

Belle had stopped on the staircase trying to wrap her mind around what her eight-year-old son was telling her. A spaceship. Out in front of the building.

Her analytical mind began to concoct alternatives to the immediate possibility that this was the real thing – rather, was this some enemy plot, or worse, an in-house conspiracy? Was it a joke, a hoax, a merchandising scheme?

Well whatever, no wonder Gary had been calling her.

She made her way to the side door, the one employees used to come in and out and punched in her code to get out of the building without setting off the alarm.

She stepped outside into the warm summer evening and was confronted with a cacophony of noises: mostly sirens, somebody on a loud speaker telling people to clear the area, the roaring sounds of large vehicles. She gingerly made her way around and quickly came face to face with a threesome of military troops.

"Ma'am," and they all three held weapons on her.

"Yes, sergeant," she answered coming to a complete stop, reading his insignia. "I work in the Museum and I'm just getting off. She pointed to her service badge with her name and picture on it.

The sergeant slowly leaned in and compared the badge with the woman.

"All right. You'll need to leave this area immediately. These men will escort you."

Belle gathered that this wasn't up for discussion, so she nodded and followed the soldiers who led her around to the back of the building.

"Any way I could get out toward the front?" she asked. "My apartment is across the street."

"No ma'am. The entire mall is locked down. You'll have to go around."

She sighed. "What's happened?"

"Ma'am, you'll have to watch the news reports," one of the soldiers answered.

She couldn't walk safely and look through the news feeds on her phone, so she opted to just follow the young men who eventually deposited her on 7th Street. From there she was able to walk her way through dense traffic back to her apartment house on Maryland Avenue. It was an old Queen Anne style house, a three-story gorgeous monstrosity complete with a flamboyant paint job, gingerbread around an enormous front porch, and a fourth-story turret. Right now there was a sign, "Apartment for Rent" posted in the front yard.

Gary was already there, waiting for her, pacing, but first, she was greeted by her son, Balfour, who ran to her.

"Mom, mom, we were so worried about you." He had thrown his arms around her and was hugging her like he didn't want to let her go.

Balfour, better known as Bae, was actually her adopted son, the child of her older and only brother. Their parents had died when Bailey was twenty-one and a senior at West Point. Belle had been sixteen and had been able to find a place to live near the school. She'd finished school and gone onto college. She was in her final year when Bailey's wife had been killed in a senseless car accident. Bae was less than a year old when Belle had moved in with her brother to care for the infant, managing to finish school on the side. And then, a year later, when Bailey . . . Major Bailey French, had been killed, killed protecting his squadron and an untold number of civilians in a far off foreign country, Belle had adopted her brother's child. She was the only parent he had ever known.

Extricating herself from her son, Belle stood and accepted a warm embrace from Gary Gaston, her fiancé. "I'm so sorry, everyone," she apologized. "I've been in the back basement of the Castle cataloguing. There's no cell service down there and I had turned my phone off so it wouldn't eat battery. What's happened?" she looked up at her fiancé.

"Come on inside," Gary suggested and she followed him into the eighteenth-century house that had been converted into small apartments. Each apartment had one or two bedrooms, a single bathroom and, usually, a combination kitchen-living room area. On the ground floor, there was a large common room complete with comfy chairs, a few small tables and huge television set where many of the residents would gather to eat, play games and watch the television. It gave a sense of family amid the general isolation of the big bustling city.

And, at this moment, everyone was gathered in the common room around the big screen television.

Belle gasped. On the screen, exactly as Bae had described it – a big, white, round spaceship was sitting in the Mall between the Castle and the Natural History Museum. It had landed nearly on top of her.

In hushed tones, Gary gave her a quick summary. "Apparently, they picked it up on radar traveling four thousand gazillion miles an hour early this morning and it went around the earth several times. They were able to get a couple of aircraft near it, but nothing could keep up with it. It began to slow up mid-morning and came down here this afternoon. Soon enough the place was surrounded by police and military. They've got a couple of tanks in there."

"Any communication coming out of it?" Belle asked.

"Nothing."

The television announcer's voice came through. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began gravely. "The Government, the Defense Department, Homeland Security, among others, are concerned by reports of panic in several large cities. I have received official communication and I've been asked to assure you that so far there is no reasonable cause for alarm. The rumors of invading alien armies and mass destruction are based on hysteria and these rumors are absolutely false. I repeat – these rumors are absolutely false."

Belle could see live pictures of the ship as the announcer kept speaking. "The ship, like nothing we have seen before, landed in Washington, D.C. today exactly at noon, Eastern Standard Time. We don't know where it came from. There is, of course, rampant speculation that it is either from some unfriendly power here on earth or that it has actually arrived from another planet."

The announcer continued. "The ship is resting exactly where it landed more than six hours ago and there has been no sign of life from inside it.

Belle watched, her mouth open in astonishment. The cameras panned the platoons of infantry soldiers surrounding the ship, their rifles at the ready.

"Troops have been rushed in and they have formed a cordon around the ship."

As the camera displayed the soldiers and their guns and all their machineries, Belle whispered, "Do we believe that our weapons will be effective against a ship like this?"

Gary seemed surprised at her question, "Sure, these are our best and strongest guns."

The camera also panned along a police barrier, where hundreds of people had gathered.

More from the announcer, "The army is taking every precaution to meet whatever the situation may require. Every eye – every weapon – is trained on this ship."

"Oh Mom, look! It's opening!" said Bae and he pointed to where a thin vertical line had appeared in the pristine whiteness of the ship.

"It's opening!" shouted the announcer. "I can see something moving!"

The camera went to a close-up on the ship and the near luminescent white of the vessel filled the screen. Slowly, a ramp appeared silently out of the side of the ship and slid down to the ground. Gasps from the crowd were heard, but then everything became strangely quiet.

A man had appeared at the top of the ramp, a dark figure silhouetted against a bright, white background.

As he stepped down the ramp, it became apparent that the man . . . creature . . . was completely covered in gold colored clothing, including a helmet that obscured his head.

At first, the Spaceman just stood there without moving. And then he held up his hand. When he spoke, his voice carried through the crowd, through the camera.

"I have come to visit you in peace – and with good will."

The man slowly walked down the ramp and then stopped at the bottom of the ramp to reach inside his clothing. He pulled out a long tube and began to advance on one of the platoon leaders.

It was only after he raised the tube that a shot rang out. The Spaceman fell to the ground. The tube was dropped and it smashed.

The cameras captured the soldiers rushing over to the fallen man as the announcer repeated the obvious, "He's been shot! He's been shot!"

"Mom, look at that giant!" Bae pointed to activity in the background, noting the movement before the television reporter saw anything.

It was an enormous creature, at least eight feet tall, covered with a dull white metal that appeared to be like the material that encased the spaceship. It moved cumbersomely, yet purposefully, toward the wounded spaceman and the soldiers quickly backed away from the fallen alien.

Belle noted that there were glowing orbs where eyes might be, but nothing that resembled a mouth. "It's a robot," she surmised.

"Or some other kind of alien," Gary suggested.

The creature moved so that it stood above the injured spaceman and surveyed the crowd. The eyes began to glow red and, behind the camera, something was clearly beginning to happen. The network changed vantage and focused on the military presence that surrounded the spaceship.

Soldiers began to drop their guns as these began to glow red. Men could be seen quickly vacating tanks which were now also glowing red. The glow went from red to white and then . . . the weapons, the tanks were gone, all reduced to metal dust.

The civilians that had gathered despite the best efforts of the police and military broke and began running away, no longer a curious group. Now they were a screaming mob, determined to get away.

The news camera switched back to the robot-man who was now surveying the weaponless soldiers surrounding the ship. It centered its attention on one soldier, apparently determining that this was the one who had fired the fateful shot. It began to advance on the hapless soldier.

The Spaceman was still on the ground, but managed to raise his head, perceiving what was going on around him. "Dove GORT, deglet ovroso!" the camera picked up his alien speech.

The robot-man stopped and froze in place. Seeing this, that the robot-man was no longer an immediate threat, a young colonel cautiously advanced on the wounded man.

"Sir, I want to help you," he said to the Spaceman.

The alien, for it was indeed an alien, nodded. He managed to sit up and reached to pick up one of the larger pieces of the smashed object and ruefully held it up. "Thank you. And I'm sorry, I dropped the tube. It contained cures for some of your more recalcitrant illnesses. It was a gift to the people of Earth."

"Are you all right?" the colonel asked him.

"I believe I have a small metal object lodged in my knee. It's causing me considerable discomfort. I shall need assistance getting up and walking."

The colonel got on a communicator. "Get an ambulance here. And batten down Walter Reed – that's where we'll be taking him." He turned to the alien, "Sir, we are going to take you somewhere to get help."

"Why, thank you sir," the alien replied.

The television screen went blank.

"What!? What happened?" everyone in the common room at the apartment house who was watching began asking questions. It was a few seconds before the picture came back on and the announcer somberly spoke to his audience, "We have been told that we must stop broadcasting from the Mall – National Security. What a series of events . . ." and the announcer began to recount the events of the day, culminating with the shooting of the Spaceman.

WALTER REED HOSPITAL

Klaatu Rumple Stiltskin, one of the lead agents of the Klaatun, the Agency charged with First Contact and specializing in dealing with . . . ah . . . challenging planets, sat on the edge of the examining table, testing out his knee. It was going to be sore for any number of days, but he thought he'd be able to get up and begin walking on it in another day.

He was pissed.

Mostly with himself.

He had been studying these people for generations and he knew what paranoid, fragile entities they were. It was part of his fondness for them – they reminded him so much of his own people – they had been such a wad of hairballs themselves many, many generations ago and it had taken them a while to claw their way up the evolutionary scale.

Of course, the first response of these Earthers was one of fear and, in their fear, they had shot him. His suit was constructed to protect vital organs, but extremities were vulnerable, and as luck would have it, the bullet had gone into one of his extremities. He really ought to make a note of this and have the suits modified so this type of thing wouldn't happen to any of his co-agents.

His superior hearing caught the conversation in the room next door.

"How is he?" A nice voice, unfamiliar to Rumple Stiltskin.

"He's fine. I was able to do a bit of an examination. He seems to have similar physiology but the organs are in different positions. His skin is . . . well, it's different." Rumple knew this voice – this was the doctor.

"What do you mean, different?" Nice voice.

"He's covered with these gold-green scales, sir." The doctor.

"Are you telling me that he's a little green man from outer space?" Nice voice.

Hah, I remember reading about that particular trope, Rumple had to smile.

"No sir. I'm just telling you that he's kinda golden-green and his skin is covered with tiny, little scales. And the eyes have a reptilian slit, not a round pupil like ours." The doctor again. "He does have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot."

"All right. So, does he breathe oxygen and bleed red?" Nice voice.

"He breathes oxygen, but he bleeds . . . kinda green." The doctor.

"And he seems aggravated." A third voice - now this was the young colonel who'd engineered his trip to this place of healing.

"Well, hell. Somebody just shot him. I always get pretty mad whenever somebody shoots me." Nice voice.

Well, somebody with a brain.

"He's asking to see the President." The colonel.

"That's why I'm here." Nice voice. "He didn't drop any hints about where he's from, did he?"

"Not a one." The doctor.

"Sir, what do you want us to do about all the reporters? They're swarming all over the hospital lobby." The colonel.

Rumple listened. There was a pause.

"Tell them . . . tell them there won't be any statement tonight." Nice voice.

"They won't like that." The colonel.

"No, I don't suppose they will. But I'm not commenting when I don't have anything to say." Nice voice.

Rumple smiled. He liked this man – and he generally didn't like military or government types.

"Well," Nice voice again, "gentlemen, I'm going in."

Rumple watched the door and there was a deferential knock. Nice – respectful and polite.

"Come in," he called out and a tall, well-dressed young man walked through. He was obviously startled by Rumple's appearance but quickly covered his reaction.

"Sir, I'm David Nolan. I'm the President's Chief of Staff and he's asked me to come to see you."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Nolan. You may address me as Klaatu."

"Mr. Klaatu . . ." David began.

"Just Klaatu. It's my title," Rumple corrected him. The two studied each other intently.

"The President asked me to convey his deepest apologies for what has happened. We all feel . . ." he struggled.

"Why don't you sit down, Mr. Nolan," suggested Rumple.

"I'm sure, I don't have to point out that your arrival is something of a surprise." Rumple gave him a slight smile and gathering courage, David continued, "Have you been traveling long?"

"About three months . . . your months."

"You must have come a long way, then?"

"About forty trillion of your miles."

David was taken a bit aback. He considered his next comment, "Naturally, we're all very curious to know where it is you come from."

"It's what you think, Mr. Nolan. I'm from another planet. Let's just say that . . . we're neighbors."

David blinked. "Uh . . . it is rather difficult for us to think of another planet as a neighbor . . . well, unless it's Mars or Venus."

"I'm not from Mars or Venus. I'm from another solar system."

"It's rather difficult for me to think that another solar system is a neighbor."

Rumple took his own deep breath. "I'm afraid, in the present circumstances, you'll have to learn to think that way."

"The present circumstances?"

"I mean . . . the reasons for my coming here."

"Well, we're very curious about that, too. Would you care to talk about it?"

"I'd be very glad to talk about, but . . . not now, not with you alone."

"Of course, perhaps you'd rather discuss it personally with the President?"

Rumple gave him a tight smile. "This is not a personal matter, Mr. Nolan. It concerns all the people on your planet. All the people."

"I'm. . . I'm not sure I understand . . ."

"I want to meet with representative from all the nations of the Earth," Rumple said simply.

Nolan sputtered, "But. . . I'm afraid that would be impossible! There are countries that have no recognized diplomatic standing and . . . well, there are the practical considerations – the time involved – the enormous distances."

"Mr. Nolan, I traveled more than forty trillion miles to have this meeting. A few thousand miles should be of little consequence when this meeting is for your own benefit." He thought for a moment. "How about your United Nations?

Nolan was again startled, "How . . how do you know about the United Nations?"

"The same way I learned to speak many of your languages, Mr. Nolan. I am responsible for this sector and I've been studying your planet for a long time. I've been getting your radio and television broadcasts for a while now."

"Oh wow," David told him. "You must have a . . . rather strange impression of us."

Rumple smiled at him. "Well, we thought there were some peculiarities in your color perception at first and there are some . . . irregularities . . . in much of what you apparently feel is entertainment."

David smiled back. "If you've been getting our broadcasts, then you know we have a deeply troubled world, with deep divisions between many people."

Rumple shook his head, "I am not concerned, Mr. Nolan, with the internal affairs of your planet. I consider these things to be your business – not mine."

"I was only hoping to make you understand . . ."

"Please understand, my mission here is not to solve your petty squabbles. It concerns the immediate fate and, ultimately, the continued existence of your entire planet."

Nolan stepped back. "Perhaps if you could explain a little . . "

"I do intend to explain, but to all the nations – simultaneously." Rumple slid off the examining table and winced – his knee was going to give him trouble for a little while. "So, how do we proceed, Mr. Nolan?" Rumple's manner did not invite disagreement. His calm manner was reinforced by the force and power of his presence.

Nolan considered. "I guess, I guess, we could call a special meeting of the General Assembly . . . but the UN doesn't represent all the nations."

"Then perhaps a meeting of all the chiefs of state?" Rumple suggested.

Nolan shook his head, "You don't understand. Many of these will not sit down at the same table – they would spend days arguing about the shape of the table."

Rumple closed his eyes. These were a stubborn, narrow-minded people. He'd known that when he'd signed on for this mission. In so many ways, they did remind him of his own kind – many thousands of years ago – he wondered if they shared any DNA – stranger things had happened.

"Mr. Nolan, I don't want to resort to threats. I'm going to tell you as clearly and as simply as I can that the future of your planet is at stake. Perhaps that is the message you should transmit to all the countries of your world."

Mr. Nolan nodded, "All right. I will make that recommendation to the President." As he got up and walked to the door, he stopped, "I am sorry, but I must tell you in all honestly that I'm extremely dubious about getting any results."

Rumple smiled at him, "Apparently, I'm not as cynical about Earth's people as you are."

"I've been dealing in Earth's politics a good longer than you have."

"I doubt that," Rumple said quietly under his breath. He'd known this was a strange and unreasonable world before he ever agreed to take the mission.

He'd been here before, of course, but it had been a long while ago. Others had visited also and found the human species to be volatile and unpredictable. Most of the Klaatun Council had voted to contain them and forego contact, simply allowing the natural course of their violent tendencies to lead them into destroying themselves. Rumple was one of the few, the very few, that thought they were salvageable and worth the effort it would take to save them, to eventually have them join the other civilized planets.