Dan's Papers - January 11, 2008

Last week, astronomers up at Harvard announced that they had discovered what appears to be a war between galaxies in outer space. One of the galaxies seems to be winning. It is beaming an unbelievably powerful death ray at the other, and this other galaxy is reeling under the attack and spewing out some sort of goo or fire that looks very much like the stuff that gets spewed out just before it dies.

Since the announcement, and this is the largest battle in the history of the universe as near as I can figure, there has been a suspicious silence coming from the Bush administration, which if I didn't know better, I would interpret as an administrative lockdown while various people in and out of the administration seriously discuss just what does this all mean and, if it means what it appears to mean, how can we stop it?

As a matter of fact, just now one of our best reporters has come breathlessly into my office bringing with him the secret minutes of this discussion and, wait a minute, yes, I can confirm that is exactly what is going on. There are Americans from both parties at this meeting, along with astronomers and generals. Even present is the astronomer who made this discovery.

President Bush has opened the meeting by asking if it is possible to tell which of these two galaxies is a democracy and which is a dictatorship. The astronomer who has made this discovery, Dan Evans of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, replied that it is not possible to tell at this juncture, and so the President has ordered the CIA to find out and get back to him.

Vice President Cheney wanted to know if any of the goo that has spilled out could possibly be oil, and Mr. Evans replied that it is certainly possible.

The President intervened at this point to say that he would like to know if the people with the oil are the same people who have a democracy because that would make it simpler for him to decide what to do. He said he would then brand the dictator oil-free galaxy as the galaxy of evil. And he would refuse to have anything to do with it. But if that weren't the case, he would think of something else.

The President then asked General Petraeus if there were any American troops in Afghanistan or Iraq who could be freed up to make a defense against this new threat. The General replied that there weren't any, unless the President was talking about maybe two or three. The President said that would be fine. I will lead the attack, he said.

Condoleezza Rice wondered about the rocket that was sent into space twenty years ago during the Reagan Administration, which included a drawing of a human and a printed speech on a piece of metal that said we humans are over here on this fourth planet from the sun in the Milky Way Galaxy and we wish everybody well and we live in peace. She said she wondered where this rocket was right now and if it would be possible to retrieve it.

"I think it might be best if we sort of just hide out here and try not to let them notice us at this particular time," she suggested.

The President said his first priority was to keep America safe, and hiding out behind Venus or Jupiter or something, was not how he intended to conduct his administration. He said that America was the leader of the free world, at least for a few more years, and as the leader of the free world it was his job to keep the world free of threats such as this, just as it was his job to keep the world free of things such as nuclear tests conducted by North Korea or Iran. Then he sat down.

General Petraeus then asked the President if he knew just exactly what this "beam" that was being used to destroy the other galaxy was and the President said he did not, and so then the General asked if there was anyone in the room who did know what this beam was.

Surprisingly, Dr. Evans said that he did. The "beam" was a combination of x-rays and radio waves that created so much power that it could kill anything that lay in its path.

The President asked how it did that. And if possible, could he describe how this would affect the Milky Way Galaxy with special attention being paid to Earth.

Dr. Evans said that if this beam were to be fired at the Earth, it would, in a period of six weeks, peel off our entire atmosphere and suck it up into the evil galaxy. Nothing could live on the planet after that.

Hillary Clinton, who had been invited to the meeting along with Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, asked if she could speak and Mr. Bush granted her request.

"I think, if I might say so, that we are focusing on the wrong thing here. We're getting ahead of ourselves." She said our first priority should be to send massive civilian aid to the galaxy under attack. "No matter whether they are the good galaxy or the bad galaxy," she said, "there are innocent people, men, women and children who are suffering. They are crying out. We should reach out to them."

I am not going to reach out to anybody, the President responded.

"We don't have enough information about all of this," Obama said. "I think we should send a fact-finding mission to get the facts. Maybe then sit down and have a discussion."

"No, no," Condoleezza Rice said. "No fact-finding mission."

"I'd go," the President said.

Al Gore spoke. "I wonder if we are not reading this the wrong way," he said. "This one galaxy approaches the other, sends out a beam and sucks off all the atmosphere of all the planets in the other galaxy."

"What are you driving at?" the President asked.

"Isn't that what we WANT?" he asked.

"What?" the President responded.

"To be sucked? Isn't it true that our atmosphere, even while we speak here at this meeting, is getting worse and worse? Here we have what looks to me like a giant vacuum cleaner situation. It comes along and it sucks off the atmospheres, takes them in, cleans them, and then maybe puts them back all fresh and bright. Isn't that what we want?"

"I don't think there's any evidence of the evil galaxy putting these atmospheres back," said the President. "Is there such evidence Dr. Evans?"

"No," Dr. Evans said.

"Maybe that's their next thing," Gore said. "So it hasn't happened yet. Or it has happened and because this is a million light years away, we are just not seeing it yet."

"Maybe that's what YOU want," said the President. "I see it the other way, which is why they elected me. This is an attack. Or a demonstration of what they can do against us in the future if we do not give in to their demands. So either you're the sucker or you're the suckee. There's no two ways about it. It's either this way or that way. And after this, there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that they're heading this way. We have to strike first. Last man in the door wins. There's not a moment to lose. Early bird catches the worm."

"Maybe it's the wrath of God," Mike Huckabee said. "One of these galaxies committed a sin and is now being punished. So we don't have to do anything."

"You shut up, Mike," the President said.

The President paused and looked out the window. "How come I can't see 'em up there in the daytime?" he asked.