Filed Under Fiction, FFCEpsilon
The Vice President stuck his head into the Oval Office.
“Sir? Can I have a word with you?”
“Make it quick.” The president replied tersely. “I’ve got a speech to memorize.”
“Of course sir.” The Vice President walked over to the desk and cleared his throat nervously a few times before continuing. “Sir, it’s about the religious groups. They aren’t backing down.”
“Did you tell them we were willing to negotiate and raise the maximum limit of procreation before taxation?”
“We did sir. They aren’t budging.”
President Marmaduke sighed miserably. They had been trying to negotiate with the religious groups for months. Ever since the scientists came back with the figures concerning the countrie’s population growth. There simply wasn’t room for any more people, not at the rate they were going, but try telling that to the protestors. They all insisted that they answered to a higher power, and that power had ordered them to go force and multiply. Contraception, vasectomies, and limits on children per family were tools of the devil.
“Sir?”
“Sorry, my mind went off a bit there.”
“Perfectly understandable,” the Vice President assured. “There might be some good news. The scientists have proposed a solution.”
“Oh?” The president leaned forward, feeling hopeful for the first time in weeks.
#
It was surprisingly easy to convince the protestors to evacuate earth. The government had been planning to use the money to drill for oil on planet Centurion, a slightly smaller version of earth with no signs of intelligent life. It had been discovered about a hundred years ago, shortly after President Chelsea Clinton was voted into her second term. Losing the potential oil and other natural resources stung, but the President reasoned that if the population went down it really wouldn’t be so bad. And so Centurion was renamed Eden-beta and anyone who objected to not being able to breed like a rabbit was offered a one-way ticket to start life over without the oppressive rule of a secular government.
“You will be the pioneers of the new age!” President Marmaduke boomed joyfully from behind a cluster of microphones.
The protest groups cheered, the press took pictures. Everybody was happy. Of course it took over a year to get everybody sent off. There were a lot of people to transport, and only so many rockets. Eventually, however, the deed was done and things started to settle back to normal. Given the enormous distance between the planets, Earth and Eden-beta didn’t keep in touch all that often. Every few months the latter would send a message letting Earth know that everything was fine and asking if anyone down there was ready to renounce their sinful ways and join the Eden-betas on their new Utopia. Earth would reply that they were happy for them and leave it at that. Then one day the message came back in an indecipherable language. Linguists from all over the world gathered to crack it, until finally they came up with the following:
To whomever it concerns,
Thank you for restocking our livestock station. It has been many years since our planet has been able to import such bounty. There were fears that things had gotten so bad that our civilization would never recover. Now, thanks to you kind strangers, there is hope.
Sincerely,
The Zargonian race
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Comments
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yesyesyesyesysyesyesyesyesyesyesyeyssisisisisisisisisisisi..
Okay, you get the idea.
Go Zargonians!