If someone was banging on the door, trying to get the President out of Toilet Time, then the whole god damned world had better have been on fire.
“I swear to fucking God, Jim-” the President said as he flung open the door, hoping Jim could smell everything he had interrupted.
“Sir, aliens just landed on the White House lawn!” Jim said, his voice cracking for the first time in forty years.
The President stared at Jim. Jim stared back. The President weighed the options. It was improbable if not impossible that intelligent life had found its way to the planet, especially without those nerds out in the Nevada wasteland picking up on it. On the other hand…he’d interrupted Toilet Time.
The President let out a single chuff. “No way.”
But there it was, parked directly in front of the house. A space ship. Not exactly a saucer. Not exactly…not a saucer. And it was silver, sure, but a beat to shit silver. Pockmarked. Like a truck that had been through a hail storm. One of its landing…feet…or whatever was sitting directly in Bev’s marigolds. She was going to hate that.
“I guess that call with the Finnish PM is going to have to be rescheduled.”
Marty was already tapping away on his phone. “And why should I say we’ve rescheduled?”
“Tell her to turn on the fucking news.”
The aliens who climbed out were humanoid, mostly. There were a lot of eyes. And they were a couple feet taller. And the smell…well, if they asked why his eyes were watering, he would simply tell them it was a human tradition upon meeting new people.
“You are the Leader of this World,” one of them said. The President was thinking of that one as Newman because something about their basic shape reminded him of his senior year English teacher.
“Well, I mean…I want to say yes,” The President said. They were still standing on the lawn, as the aliens had refused to come inside. He was sure someone was hearing the conversation, if not the press then some intelligence group or another. Washington was lousy with them.
“You can speak for the World?” the other one asked. The President was thinking of this one as Jimmy for absolutely no reason he could figure out.
“Again…I want to say yes…look, why don’t you tell me what you fellas are looking for? Maybe it is something I can handle on my own.”
“Ah. Good,” Jimmy said, trying for pleasant and hitting robotic instead. “We demand the total surrender and evacuation of this entire planet. We are taking it for-”
Jimmy didn’t get much further because The President was doing that embarrassing laugh, the one that sounded like a cross between a horse whinny and a clown car horn, that his press secretary kept telling him to stop doing because those fuckers in the opposition kept playing clips of the one time he had done it at his inauguration and calling him the R word. But, like, come on…
“This sound…we have learned,” Newman said. “This is the sound humans make when they find something… ‘funny.’”
The alien was just about yelling to be heard over The President’s laughter. Even some of his staff had started to giggle, although they were doing a better job of keeping it in.
“This is not a joke!” Jimmy said. “We are taking the planet!”
“Okay, okay, wait…phew, okay, hold on, Jesus Christ, ahhh, my sides, my face…I haven’t laughed that hard in…man, it’s been a while. Okay, I’m good. I’m good,” he said again to Marty.
“Here’s the deal,” The President said to the aliens, who looked pissed off even with inhuman faces. “I can’t officially give you shit.”
“You are the Leader of the World.”
“Wrong,” The President yelled, hoping all the ratfucks heard it and wouldn’t accuse him of trying to be the President of Earth. Again. “I am…in no way…the Leader of the Whole Fucking Planet.”
“Sir, language,” Marty muttered in an arch tone, still tapping away at his phone.
“Does that really matter right now?” The President muttered back, gesturing at the guests.
“This will be recorded into history books,” came back in a sing song.
“Ah, fuck.”
“What is this low discussion?” Jimmy said. “You are plotting in front of us.”
“No, no, calm down. Listen, okay? I am not the Leader of the World. I am the President of the United States of America, which is only a part of the world. Like, a small part, honestly. What’s our landmass percentage again?”
“We have seen your cinema movies,” Newman said. “They make it clear that you are the Leader of the Free World. World.”
“Yeah, we’re big pissers,” The President said with a hand wave. “Uh, I mean…yes, we have a large, uh, standing…on the world stage…and the movie…stage…Marty, help me out.”
“One point eight six seven percent,” Marty said.
“What?”
“You asked for the US’s percentage of world landmass.”
The President sighed and stared into the empty spot between the two aliens. He looked at Newman and tried to make a see what I have to deal with? face. This wasn’t a face in their race, apparently.
“You will order the evacuation of the planet-”
“No, I will not, because I can’t. Am I not explaining this properly? Let me break it down. A, we don’t have that kind of technology. B, even if I did, I can’t tell the whole planet to jump ship. I’m not in charge of the whole planet. Other countries have their own leaders, okay? We would have to talk about this.”
The two aliens stared at him for so long without moving that The President began to wonder if they had died.
“How?”
“Huh?”
“How,” Jimmy started again, “Can a planet have more than one leader?”
The President shrugged. “I don’t know, but we’ve got…I mean, it depends on the definition, but there’s probably close to two hundred heads of state.”
“You do not have a world government? At this stage in your evolution?”
“…no…”
And then the aliens…well, The President wasn’t familiar with their physiology or anything, but it sure did sound like they were laughing at him.
“Are you laughing?” he asked.
“No,” Newman said, clearly laughing.
“Hey! I don’t come to your planet and shit all over your species! All while trying to take the damn thing over.”
“You are failing to take care of it.”
“Yeah? So fucking what. That’s our problem to ignore. Only we get to kill each other, get it? You don’t get to come here and kill us.”
“Please,” Newman said, still making that laughing noise. “Confer with your…heads of state…”
“You know what, I’m going to! I’m going to get all of them on the phone at the same time! And I can already guarantee you no one is going to vote to give the planet to a couple of alien peckerwoods like you! The only thing we are going to vote on is whether we’re going to bust out the nukes.”
The aliens stopped laughing. “Your nuclear weapons?”
“Hell yeah, brother.”
Newman squared whatever counted as their shoulders. “We are already on your planet. You would not use those weapons to stop us on your own planet.”
“You’ve seen the ‘cinema movies’ haven’t you? We use those fucking things on our planet to kill each other. What makes you so special?”
The two aliens made some noises at each other, and without another word of stilted English turned and went back into their little ship thingy.
“Sir,” Marty said, as they watched the ship rise into the air. “A Russian representative is on the phone.”
The President took a big sigh. “Yeah. Of course he is.”
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 