Room for a View

What Planet Is This, Anyway? By Todd Paul

The phone rang as I was kicking back in my undisclosed location with a sugar-free, caffeine-free, calorie-free cola drink and bag of partially hydrogenated genetically modified corn puffs with ranch-flavored imitation cheese product and good mouthfeel. I like to just relax and get away from it all sometimes. Otherwise a sense of unreality starts to set in.
Ordinarily I would have let the machine take a message, but the extraterrestrial code on my caller ID told me it was my Plutonian friend Larry on the line. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked him how things were going on his planet.
“Great!” he burbled. “There’s a new administration, you know, and President Gbxyx just gave everyone a tax refund.”
“I’m surprised Gbxyx won the election,” I said. “Last time we talked, you said most people didn’t like him.”
“Well actually, he didn’t win,” said Larry. “But it was really, really close. But anyway, he’s doing a great job, and we’re all really happy that the guy who got the most votes lost, now that we’re at war.”
“You’re at war?”
“Well, it’s not really a war, because the council didn’t ratify it,” Larry said. “But it’s just like a war, except we don’t have to follow the war conventions when we capture the Neiths.”
“Neiths?” I said. “You mean people from Neith, the fabled moon of Venus? I thought it didn’t exist.”
“It doesn’t,” Larry said. “That’s what makes them so hard to hit.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Your president, who wasn’t elected—”
“Right,” said Larry.
“—declared a non-war on the Neiths—”
“Right.”
“Who don’t really exist?”
“Oh, they exist all right,” said Larry. “They attacked us. But they’re hard to locate. Some were on Mercury, so we overthrew the government there, because we didn’t like them anyway. Next we’re going to overthrow the government of Jupiter, because we don’t like them, either.”
“Neiths from Jupiter attacked you?”
“Oh, no,” said Larry. “The Neiths that attacked us were mostly from Saturn. But we’re friendly with Saturn.”
“I see,” I said. “Kind of like losing your wallet in a dark alley, and then looking for it under a street-lamp, where the light is better. At that rate, your war could take a while.”
“President Gbxyx says we’re going to wipe out all evil in the galaxy,” said Larry. “It’s going to take years and years.”
“I would imagine so,” I said. “But won’t Gbxyx have a hard time keeping a war going that long without the support of your planetary council?”
“Oh, they don’t count,” said Larry. “They’re not even part of the underground government. See, Gbxyx has a whole separate government in secret underground bunkers, so if he gets killed they can run the country for him. The council doesn’t have anything like that.”
“Oh. Well, what about the other planets? Do they all support your war?”
“No,” admitted Larry. “But they don’t count, either. We have photon weapons, you know, and we’re targeting some of them just in case they try to develop photon weapons too, or anything else we don’t like. We even targeted Mars!”
“Your old enemy, the red planet,” I said. “But I thought you and the Martians were friends now?”
“We are, but you can never be too sure,” said Larry. “Besides, we’re bigger than they are now, so we don’t have to cooperate with them any more.”
“Pluto is bigger than Mars?”
“Figuratively speaking. For example, we unilaterally abandoned the old photon torpedo ban treaty we used to have with them, and there’s nothing they can do about it!”
“Won’t that make them a little nervous—abandoning the treaty, and then targeting them like that?”
“Well, we have to look after our own interests, and defend democracy in the galaxy. That’s why Gbxyx suspended some civil rights on our own planet, and now we don’t hear as many complaints as we used to.”
“What kind of civil rights?”
“Oh, just stuff that might get in the way of the war—the right to a fair trial, property rights, privacy rights, rights to know what the government is doing ... stuff like that.”
“Your government isn’t telling you what it’s doing?”
“Oh, sure,” said Larry. “We get lots of information. In fact there’s a whole new office of strategic information the military set up. They said they were going to give out disinformation at first, but people didn’t like that, so now they say they’re only going to give out true facts.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean they first said they were going to lie, and then they said they were going to tell the truth?”
“Right.”
“And you believe them?”
“Sure,” said Larry. “They just changed their minds.”
“Hmmm.” I scratched my head. “You know, this reminds me of a conversation I overheard last week between three friends, who were talking about a fourth. The first one said, ‘He told me he’s a Gemini.’ The second said, ‘But he might be lying.’ And the third said, ‘Sure, but lying is very typical behavior for Geminis.’”
“What has that got to do with anything?” said Larry. “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about, half the time. Look, this is a very long distance call and I have to go shopping tonight before the malls close. It’s the least I can do to support the war effort. But before I ring off, tell me—how are things on Earth these days?”
I stepped to the window and looked out. A factory smokestack belched fine particulates into the atmosphere. A truck rumbled by, carrying drilling equipment destined for the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Far in the distance, an ice shelf the size of Rhode Island crumbled into the sea and dissolved.
“I guess we’re hanging in there,” I told Larry.
“Great,” he said. “Let’s roll.”