The United States government has proven itself completely incapable of keeping a secret anymore. If it could, nobody would ever have known who was blowing the president under the desk in the Oval Office. It doesn't stop them from trying, though. Even when a giant alien walks out of a spaceship right in front of the Capitol Building they think they can keep it a secret.

Mass hysteria is what they called it at first, but then someone hit on the brilliant notion to proclaim that it was a hypnotic nerve agent released by terrorists to...well, terrorize everyone. And people believe them! It gave them a fine excuse to go tromping around yet another little sandy country over there. Me, though, I've had every kind of drug in my system at one time or another since my younger days. I'm clean now -- at my age you've got to be, since you never know what is going to interact the wrong way with your heart medication -- but I know damn well when I'm under the influence of something, and I wasn't that day.

Besides, I was far enough away that no kind of gas or bomb or whatever could have gotten to me. I was clear up on Arlington Heights and playing around with a video recorder gadget that my granddaughter got me for Christmas. You never know when the old memory banks are going to start getting corrupted, if you know what I mean, and ever since they announced plans to sell advertising space on the graves in Arlington Cemetery, I figured I wanted to record what the place looked like back when people were still decent and cared about these things.

Now, around that time there was a lot of news about an asteroid that was going to make a close pass to Earth. People were all excited about it, which you have to expect after Paris got flattened by that comet, or meteor, whatever, a couple of years ago. The experts that the news folks always seem to have handy to talk about these kind of things kept shaking their heads and saying that there was nothing to worry about, that we might see some disruption in communications but nothing more.

That, though, was before the damned thing made a U-turn and started to head back.

That was the second reason I wanted to get some footage of the last bit of greenery within a hundred miles of Washington. Never know when it might not be there anymore.

Everyone was yelling at the experts and the experts were yelling at each other and the government was yelling loudest of all to try to keep people from hearing anyone say what everyone was already thinking: This ain't no ordinary asteroid. They tried to predict where it was going to hit. First it was somewhere in Africa, but then the thing started to speed up. Then it was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but of course it slowed down, so nobody really had any idea where it was going to come down.

Just my luck that it happened to come down in the middle of Washington, DC, right when I was out taking pictures of the nice pretty lawn at Arlington Cemetery. I can tell you right up front, it wasn't any asteroid, it wasn't any hallucination, and it wasn't a weather balloon or swamp gas or cloud formation or pie plate being tossed through the air. What it looked like was an old-fashioned helicopter, except without the top rotors or the long tail. I don't really know how to describe it any further. It was just a kind of big egg-shaped thing, and I mean big! Jeezus, was it ever big. It flew right over my head, and I swear it blocked out the sun for a hundred yards on either side of me. "Damn!" I said. It didn't make any noise at all, totally silent, and when it went over I felt all my hair stand up straight and start to crackle. I dropped my cane -- it was made of metal, like this one -- and when I bent to pick it up a big spark jumped from it onto my finger. Zap! Just like that.

I wanted to get a video of it but the recorder wasn't working. I opened it up and aw, hell, the power pack was all shot, with soot on the contacts and smoke coming out of it. I had another one, though, since those damned things always run out right at the worst time, so I stuck that in and voom! Viewfinder lights up, display lights up, and we were rolling.

Did I mention how big this thing was? My god, it looked as big as a battleship, moving in over the city and then slowing down and just hovering there right over the Mall. I hit the zoom button and whirrrrp, there I am, right up close. I saw people running all over like ants trying to get off of the Mall, and then this thing came down. It had three feet on it of some kind. Two of them came down first together, and then the third one, all three sinking down into the soil like it was quicksand.

And then, I swear to god, the biggest goddamn monster you ever saw came out of it. I was zoomed in on the ground and at first all I saw was his feet. They sank into the ground, too, like this thing weighed a million pounds. You know, what he looked like most to me was a lion -- you remember those? -- all furry and with a big, big mane around his head, and this long tail that was flipping around behind him. He was a hell of a brute too, all muscly and brawny, and I say "he" because he didn't have a stitch of anything on that would leave you wondering. I had to zoom back to get all of him into the frame at one time, and when I did I caught a shot of him beside the Washington Monument. That was before they made it the Exxon-Mobil Washington Monument and had all those things sticking off of it. Back then it was just the white spire, and this son of a bitch was at least half as tall as it was. And he was still a little bit behind it, so he was probably even bigger.

There were people running around all over the place but he didn't even seem like he saw them. He just walked around to the side of his ship and opened up a big square hatch, then poked the whole top part of his body inside. His tail was swinging all this way and that up over his butt. Right then I saw police cars coming in with their lights going and cops and whatnot running around. I heard pop-pop-pop, and in the viewfinder I could see some of these idiots shooting off guns. Big Leo was just going about his business like they weren't even there. Here and there I could see little ruffles splash in his fur where the bullets were hitting but he never so much as flinched.

After a few seconds he stood back up. He was holding some kind of metal rod in his fingers -- brought it up right to his face, stared at it a second, then bent over again and put it back where he had found it. All the while those yahoos were still shooting at him. I got a little worried when he stood up again and walked back around to the big hatch that he first came out of and reached inside. I figured he'd come out with a ray gun or a big fly swatter and teach these little bastards a lesson; instead he had with him what looked like a shiny silver frying pan. He turned in my direction and looked around, and then his head dropped down and he looked at the ground.

I hit the zoom again. "Holy crap," I said, "What the hell?" All around his feet were people, all pushing in and waving up at him like he was the president. Can you believe it? For every sensible person who got the hell out of Dodge when this thing showed up, there was some goddamn hippie who thought this was some kind of Age of Aquarius, Nirvana, I-don't-know Krishna god thing come to enlighten them. They were all smiling and waving their hands and holding their babies up -- can you imagine that? Holding these little babies up like they figured they'd get some kind of blessing.

I figure that Big Leo was thinking the same thing, because he just kind of stared at them for a minute like he didn't know what to make of it all, and then he bent down. I watched up close while his hand came down toward them all, big as a house to them. First he swept it this way, real slow, shoving them back to one side like a bulldozer, and then off to the other side. They were all stumbling and tumbling as they got pushed away. I heard later that there were a number of broken arms and legs from that, but what the hell did they expect? They had nobody to blame but themselves.

Anyway, Leo just pushed them aside, real easy, and then stood up and started walking. It was one hell of a sight, I tell you, big muscles flexing and the wind blowing his mane, just like a giant furry movie star. He kept his eyes down and watched where he put every step, the same way a cat picks his way across the lawn. He lifted one leg up high and stepped right over the USDA offices. I watched his foot come down on some cars parked behind it and said to myself, "Jesus, I hope there's nobody in any of those." He just kept going, stepping over the buildings one by one. The only one that got damaged was the Blue Cross building. His toes brushed over the roof and tore off a good chunk of it. Lord knows they deserve it, the sons of bitches.

He finally got to the edge of the Tidal Basin and squatted down right next to the boat house there. That frying pan of his came sweeping down and hit the water and sent a big frothy wave rushing out that smashed a lot of those expensive boats there to pieces against the dock. When he stood up again the pan bottom was all hanging down to a point. I used to have a little plastic water cup like that when I was a Boy Scout -- had these concentric rings that nested in each other so you could carry it flat in your backpack. Leo stared down into it for a second, then reached in and fished something out, then bent down and dropped it back into the water. I saw that it was a little rowboat, and this fellow came falling out of it and started swimming like mad while Leo just turned around and walked back to his helicopter, or whatever it was. He walked just like before, lifting his foot up high and putting it down real soft on the other side of each building.

Well, he got back to where he'd started and leaned down into that hatch again with his pot of water, only when he stood back up the pot was a pan again. He tossed the rest of the water away -- I saw a few dozen hippies go surfing across the mall right then -- and then he crawled back inside his gizmo. As he did he kicked something inside that came flying out. A big metal thing, all shiny, came out of there, hit the ground and bounced four, five times, then started rolling. It hit the entrance to the metro station right there in front of the Alliance Bank Smithsonian Castle and stopped, just about the time Leo's machine lifted straight up into the sky. It didn't make a sound, not so much as a whisper. It just kept going up and up and up until I couldn't see it anymore, not even with the zoom lens all the way out.

I dropped back down to the metal thing, which kind of looked like a Metro car without any windows, and right away I saw that it was surrounded by police and those fellows in the black suits that always show up before the president goes visiting anywhere. Then all of a sudden someone was shouting at me. I turned and I saw a Park Police officer running toward me. "I need that recorder!" he shouted at me. "National Emergency!"

"Now, just a goddamn minute!" I shouted back, but he grabbed it right out of my hands. Then he gave me a card that says he's Park Police Officer Frank Rutkowski and shouted, "You can claim it tomorrow at the Park Service office." And then he was gone.

Well, you know, the next day they told me that there was no such person as Frank Rutkowski in the whole of the Park Service, and never had been, and furthermore because of budget cuts there wasn't even anyone stationed up on Arlington Heights at the time this all happened. About this time they had the whole mess cleaned up. All the big footprints that Leo had left along Independence Avenue and Fourteenth Street and all over the Mall had been filled in all neat and tidy. Funny how they can do that in one day when they can't fix a goddamn pothole in front of my house that's been there for two years.

True to form, too, the government came up with that story about drug-carrying bombs and all that, and that's why our boys are over there again, and there was never any kind of giant lion or any metal hoobajoob or any fellow in a rowboat, although about a hundred and fifty people claimed to have been him and a couple million swear that he was the friend of their uncle's ex-boss. The thing is, like I said, the government can't keep a secret. Every now and then some picture or video shows up on the internet, and people argue over whether it's a fake or not, and experts point to shadows going the wrong way and people who appear and disappear from the frame and such. I guess there are a lot of fakes, though, and that makes it hard as hell to figure out what's real. It doesn't help that all sorts of whacko groups out there still claim that this was some kind of second coming or an ambassador from some outer space lion people who figured we just weren't worth bothering with. They keep yelling for the government to release the "Celestial Gift" or "Universal Truth" or whatever they call it that Big Leo tossed out before he went on his way.

Then there's the folks who insist it's some kind of super-weapon that was given to us by an advanced alien society, and that the government is busy trying to figure out how it works so we can dominate the other nations and rule the world.

The government just keeps saying it doesn't exist, never did, never will.

Bullshit, I say. I saw it. I saw it, and I saw Leo, and I saw his frying pan and I saw the guy with the rowboat swimming like a rabid flounder. I know that it exists, but I also know that it isn't any kind of magical hoodoo or cure for diseases or a super-weapon or even advanced technology that will someday help get that goddamned pothole filled in.

See, now and then some kind of supposedly classified information leaks out and the government denounces it but pretty much they just let it be...all except for one report that turned up somewhere and started making the rounds. It would show up in the news and on searches, but any time you went to click on it, it just wouldn't be there. Document contains no data, it says.

No data, my ass. I've seen it. I know what it says.

If you know where to look on the computer, though, you can still find a few secret places where the data is kept. The gadget that Leo left behind, it turns out, is just a hollow tube, totally empty, all except for some pretty puzzling chemical residues: phosphoric acid, glucose, and believe it or not, a hell of a lot of caffeine.

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