Canto Sixty-Six – The Arboretum Again
Senator Tedhkruhz entered the arboretum with a glum look on his smug face, but it quickly blossomed into a smug smile as he viewed the scene before him. In fact, his smile became so smarmy and smug that his smirky grin gave off waves of puerile smugness.
“So, Makkhain, you have succeeded in our little quest to kill the planet savers, have you?”
Makkhain, cradling Sizzahl’s apparently lifeless body, looked at him with a glare of pure hatred. The two naked Earthers, both children, glared at him also. He also noted the little Telleron sitting against a huge yellow, red, and green flower thing.
“Where’s your conquering army, Senator?” Makkhain growled.
“I don’t need them. We shut down this base, which I believe controls all the atmosphere restorers on the planet, and we have won. The world ends, and we are the winners.”
“Aren’t you afraid that without your army, I will turn on you and kill you for what you’ve done to me, my family, and my world?”
“Oh, certainly not. You are a clone. And you’ve been thoroughly programmed to do what I ask you to do.”
“Is that so?” Makkhain laid Sizzahl gently down and stood, knife in hand. He carefully balanced it in his right hand for throwing.
“Go ahead. Try to throw the knife at me.”
He cocked his mighty lizard arm to throw, and then started to whip his throwing arm forward. But he couldn’t release. The knife clattered harmlessly on the floor.
“You see? You are completely in my power. Now destroy the controls of the atmospheric instruments.”
Makkhain smiled. “I can’t overcome your programming, it’s true. But I no longer do your bidding.”
“Oh, but you have to. Destroy those controls now!”
Makkhain continued to grin. The two Earthers and the Telleron were smiling now too.
“What is this? Why are you not doing what I command?”
“Because I can’t, fool. I don’t know where the controls are, and Sizzahl can’t tell me because she’s unconscious and probably dying.”
Senator Tedhkruhz lost his smug smile. A look of consternation crossed his ugly lizard face.
“Are you sure you can’t kill him?” the Earther male said.
“I can’t. But others in the room can. And I can’t harm him, but I can dance with him.”
“Dance with me?” the Senator scoffed.
“By your command,” Makkhain said. He moved up to Tedhkruhz and took him by both hands. They began to whirl around each other, Makkhain leading the lizard dance and forcing the Senator to go tripping along. The Senator grimaced as he realized how he had uttered precisely the wrong words at precisely the wrong time.
“Is Lester still hungry for Galtorrian flesh, Brekka?” Makkhain asked.
“Dance him this way,” said the Telleron girl with and angry-eyed grin.
It didn’t dawn on the lizard-man overlord until too late that Makkhain was steering the dance directly toward three big moving blossoms lined with what could easily be interpreted as teeth. He obviously should’ve ordered Makkhain to stop dancing and let him go, but nothing came out of his throat but a hoarse, frightened croak.
The plant attacked with all three blossoms. One grabbed Makkhain and took two bites and swallowed. The other two grabbed Tedhkruhz, one by the head, the other by both legs. They pulled him into two pieces before each happily munched on their half of the wishbone.
The children who remained in the arboretum, three awake and aware, one lying unconscious, were stunned into silence by the sudden end to violence. It was then that they heard and answered the anxious voice of a former old Sunday school teacher turned young war leader. The rest of the Telleron army was suddenly at the arboretum door.
Catch a Falling Star 
Politics in an Alien World
I am working on the end of my sci-fi comedy novel, Stardusters and Space Lizards. It is about an alien world that is dying from too much warfare and ignoring of pollution-created climate change. So today, after personally declaring war on the Trumpinator yesterday, I want to talk about politics. Not Earth politics. Alien politics. Any resemblance to real-world politics will be coincidental, or the result of truth being far stranger than fiction.
Let’s be thoughtful for a moment and analyze the way politics works on an alien planet. The political world always seems to devolve into two sides. Remember, we are talking made-up alien worlds here. So let’s give the two sides completely made up names. Let’s call them Dumbocrats and Ratpublicans. They are nothing like we have here on Earth. These are aliens, remember, nothing like us.
On one side you have the party that is totally self-centered and cares more about business and profits and what the individual can gain from those than it does about anything else, even insignificant things like other alien people’s lives. These are the conservative, me-party folks who try to maximize benefits for themselves and the relatively small circle of alien people they care about and think of as their own. We’ll call them Ratpublicans, again, totally randomly, for no particular reason.
Then, on the other side, you have the selfless ones, the ones who are more interested in making everybody happy, an exercise in futility that invariably leaves no one happy in the long run. I mean, if you give everything away to help others, eventually you are left with nothing. It is the reason liberal alien people often starve to death. It is also the reason that these selfless beings get so used to being poor and having nothing of their own. We’ll call them Dumbocrats, only because it is the name we have left over.
What always works best is when neither side gets everything they want. It is far better that the two sides grab the Enchilada of Happiness from opposite sides and pull with relatively equal force. That way it stays about in the middle and no one gets the whole enchilada. If the Ratpublicans get the whole thing, then the most powerful, ruthless, and evil among them will selfishly eat what they want and horde the rest, letting everyone else, even less-powerful Ratpublicans starve. If the Dumbocrats get the whole thing, they will give small bits to everyone, even the space rats and space pigeons, and visiting Space Goons from other planets, and no one will have as much as they want. Keeping the whole enchilada in the middle of the great political tug-of-war is the whole trick to making things stay balanced and under control.
If something throws the whole system out of balance, say an orange-headed alien in a gold-colored fright wig suddenly uses the magic of corrupt business practices to seize control of the Enchilada of Happiness, then the whole system starts to break down.
Now, you may have noticed already that instead of outer space aliens, I have used old movie clowns to illustrate this essay. I think it is entirely possible that the best people to listen to when it comes to the matter of politics and what to do about them are the clowns, the comedians, the mockers, and the fools. They have looked at the way things are with a keen eye to find what they can make fun of and make us laugh about. But because they are looking with a keen eye, often they are seeing the truth for what it is. Did you ever hear what Charlie Chaplin had to say?
Of course, we all know this whole discussion is about aliens on other planets. It doesn’t apply here. How could it? We are nothing like them. We’re smarter and better and have all the answers… if only we would take a moment to realize that we do.
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