College students, desperate to find meaning in this alien arrival, eschew their conservative parents’ council and begin to pour into the offices of their professors. The PHDs offer little explanation but assure their students that the highest tenured academics from around the globe have been invited to Washington DC to participate in “Arrival Day” (AD). The professors assure their students that the corporate press (CP) knows less than they’re letting on because if the CP knew details, the academia world would know as well. A few level-headed students begin to question the intentions of these professors and retreat to their dorms to discuss what little they’ve been told.

In Washington, DC the president is meeting with his cabinet in secret. The Pentagon has been reduced to a skeleton crew by its commander-in-chief, leaving the Secretary of Defense (SoD) confused. Why would the head of the military scale back defense at a time like this? A full-scale alien invasion could very well be on the horizon, and as far as anyone knows, only the president, vice president and one scientist at SETI have seen the communications from the aliens that could give even a hint of their intent.. The SoD likes the president and trusts his judgment but understands the stakes of having an alien life form, which is obviously technologically superior to Earth’s, arriving with no comprehensive defensive precautions in place. When the SoD further contemplates the situation, he realizes that if the alien’s technological capabilities are far beyond ours, what defense system could Earth possibly mount in advance?

Meanwhile, with two weeks until AD, the CP is acting as if they have all the answers. However, many in Washington are aware that only three people in the world have all available information about the arrival, and they begin to mock the CP in private as the CP continues to present fiction as fact. Beltway insiders have speculated as to what the arrival means but become convinced that whatever the CP is reporting is “happy horseshit,” as one lobbyist from Texas refers to it.

Inside the newsrooms, “happy horseshit” is exactly what is being concocted. One producer for a major cable network tells his writers, “if that idiot president won’t tell us, of all people, what is going on, it’s our job to keep the public informed and calm.” He instructs his writers to make 70% of the reporting on the “arrival” positive and 30% as a mild warning that caution still must be exercised. He goes on to say that “right now we are the only lifeline for the people. They are relying on us for their sanity. When it comes down to it we are in control. In essence, we are the government and we need the public to look upon us as such.”