Federations

Hey look, all I’m sayin’ is that if the African Aliens are as powerful as they say they are, then I want someone with a little global perspective negotiating with them. This new President, he’s got his head on straight, yeah. But he has enough to deal with, cleaning up after the last administration. A messed up economy, the Constitution used for toilet paper, all that crap about torture—you know, almost every other country hated us before President Dipshit made that bad deal, now they all do. Maybe Mandela and the Lama can fix the mess he made without starting another damn war.

Then again, if the Byernamers hadn’t made such a big show of making first contact in the middle of the Super Bowl halftime show, the government probably wouldn’t have ever told us about them or the soy deal. We’d be just as clueless as the Chinese were—and don’t tell me you weren’t floored when that bit came out about Mao being in contact with that other other tribe of aliens. 50 years ago and no one knew for all this time! I can’t believe that dude is still alive somewhere out in space.

And you notice how quick the Chinese got their asses out of Tibet after the Dalai Lama talked about it on Al Jazeera? Makes me wonder what else they don’t want us to know.

No, you know what, it makes me worry. All these different aliens showing up and putting us in the middle of their fights that’ve been going on for centuries? Something tells me we won’t come out ahead no matter what we do. We had enough problems of our own before any of them showed up. Now we have to deal with international and inter . . . space relations. Who has the right to talk to who and negotiate what and all else. And we still have global warming!

The aliens don’t care, though. They’re too busy fighting. It’s like what they came here to get out of us is secondary—they still have to learn how to get on with each other.

You know, I used to think that the best part of space travel would be getting away from folk you can’t stand. Just put all your people on a spaceship and go. What’s the use if you all just end up in the same places arguing over the same ol’ shit?

So no, I’m not letting my daughter sign up for that colony thing the African Aliens are setting up. She just turned sixteen, and thank God for that parental consent requirement. This whole “cultural exchange” thing to fix global warming, it just doesn’t sit right. What do they need with a million people? To go off to some planet and do what? For who? We won’t even be able to communicate with them for five years. I don’t think so. Not my daughter.

We should have been solving our own problems instead of counting on some damn handout from the sky. So you know what? I told her no. Don’t make the same mistakes they did, I said. It’ll just be the same shit, different planet. And if you have to deal with the same old shit no matter where you go, so you might as well stay right here and do it at home.

Yeah, she’s mad at me now, but she’ll have other chances. Won’t be long before all the other aliens out there show up. A billion stars in the sky? There’s got to be more than just three kinds.

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS JOHN C. WRIGHT