His dark hair was gray on the sides and a craggy face made him look harsh and uncompromising. The navy-blue suit looked out of place on him. He was the type of man that looked at home in a military uniform.

The Space Agency did call in a lot of military people, Dirk thought. They’re almost as mysterious as this damn object!

“Good afternoon,” Jacks said, his voice firm and unafraid. Dirk admired him, especially when he hadn’t been able to pull that off himself. “Less than an hour ago, an as of yet unidentified object was discovered near Earth. We are actively investigating to determine threat level and where it may have come from.

“Unfortunately, at this time we know very little. It does not appear to be of natural origin for several reasons. One, it is not moving at all. An asteroid or meteor would be in some form of orbital motion. Second, our initial scans have indicated the surface is perfectly smooth and made of a form of tempered metal.

“All that said, we do not want to jump to any conclusions and will provide updates as we have them. There is no cause for panic. Our top minds are unraveling the mystery. As you know, we are multinational organization and have the full support of our governments to conduct this investigation. Any questions?”

A string of people began shouting, news reporters that somehow arrived at the event quickly enough to participate. Dirk felt grateful to not be among them. He hated having to vie for the attention of the speaker, shouting louder than the person next to him to be heard. Worse, he was quite certain those events were rigged anyway.

The people who got to ask questions were predetermined.

Acting as an anchorman appealed to him far more than any other form of journalism.

Jacks pointed at someone. “Yes, go ahead.”

“Mister Jacks,” a man’s voice asked the question. He sounded like he might be from Boston. “The Space Agency has been quite private in the past about … well, everything. Should we assume that this press conference means we’re looking at a dangerous event? What has brought you out today?”

“You are right, we don’t offer many updates. Most of our work is incremental and not particularly interesting on its own. We have a few major projects we would love to talk about but they were simply not ready. That said, we are in the best position to investigate this particular event and that’s why I’m here today.”

“Can you tell us if this object has anything to do with the power outages throughout the world? Are you planning a response?”

“We have not detected any signals coming from the ship,” Jacks said. “But it stands to reason that it’s somehow involved. This is at the top of our research list and we hope to have an answer soon. If it did cause these power interruptions, it did so in a way that we don’t know how to detect yet but we should not make assumptions. Facts are coming soon and yes, we have a plan for a response.”

“Mister Jacks! Mister Jacks!” A woman rang out over all the others and was called upon. “Do you think this may be an alien intelligence? Are we making any attempt to communicate with it and what is your opinion on their hostility?”

Jacks smiled. “I believe I said something about jumping to conclusions before.” His comment drew some nervous laughs from the audience.