10 Downing Street, London, England. May, 2022

“Good afternoon… I would like to converse with Prime Minister Johnson Boris please.”

“How did you get in here? Who are you?”
“Ah, if I told you that, you wouldn’t believe me…”
“Stay there… and don’t move a muscle!”
The receptionist urgently whispered into her mobile phone.
“Paul, Paul – there’s a-a person in here with no ID!”
“Is this what you require?”

The visitor was now sporting a VIP ID badge, secured with a blue and silver ribbon around her neck. “Oh, I’m sorry… I didn’t notice… it’s okay Paul.”
“Johnson Boris… please… I need to speak with him urgently.”
“The Prime Minister is engaged just now…” 
“Ah yes, I read that he was engaged to Miss Carrie Symonds. But I understood they had ‘tied the noose’.”
“Tied the what?”
“Forgive me. I meant to say, ‘Tied the knot’.”
“Oh, I see! Yes, they got married a while ago. Sorry, the Prime Minister has important meetings all day, and can’t be disturbed. But you can leave a message for him…”
“I really need to see him in person… it’s rather important.”
“I can book you in for Tuesday next week…”
“Impossible. I have only one day in London, then go to Paris. After that, Washington for an appointment with President of the United States of America, followed by a meeting with the President of China in Beijing the next day. Finally, I will meet Russian President Putin Vladimir in Moscow before returning home. So, as you see, it is imperative that I meet with your leader today.”

“Can I have your name please?”
“I’m afraid you will not be able to pronounce it in English. But you can call me ‘Light Beam’.”

“Er… right, Mr, Miss Light Beam. And what is your business with the Prime Minister?”
“I represent a Confederation of Galaxies, and I’m here to do an audit on your Earth. It’s a regular occurrence, so nothing to worry about…”
“I’ve been set up, haven’t I?”
“Set – up?”
“This is a reality game show, isn’t it?”
“Well, it is reality, but I assure you it’s not a game. So, the Prime Minister please!”
“What’s all this noise Susan? I’m trying to work in here!”
“I’m sorry Prime Minister… this lady… gentleman… person, insists on seeing you…”
“And you are?”
“Ah very pleased to meet you, Johnson Boris. I represent a Confederation of Galaxies, and I am here to conduct an audit on your quaint planet. The last one took place more than two thousand years ago (Earth time), and with many significant changes to this planet, an audit is well overdue…”

“She’s a looney… kick her out Susan, and don’t disturb me again… oh!”
Light Beam uses some sort of taser on the PM, originating from her finger tip.
“Open the door, Miss Susan, or your Leader will never talk again!
Susan, trembling, opens the door to the PMs office.
“You can leave us now Miss Susan. I will not harm your so-called leader… unless he deserves it, of course. Goodbye.”
“I’ll do anything you want! Just don’t harm Carrie or the children!
“Is that all you care about? Your Earth is on the brink of total annihilation, and all you can think about is your own little family. You’re pathetic! Call yourself a leader?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Ah, now you have the right attitude. Please sit down and try to relax. I have a list of things that require changing on your planet, and in order to comply with my recommendations, you must follow each to the letter.”

Boris resignedly sits down with a deep sigh, loosening his tie. “Okay, go ahead…”
“Number One: We need you to behave like a World Leader.
Number Two: Stop all industries taking coal, oil and gas from the Earth.
Number Three: Stop all industries polluting the Earth.
Number Four: Ban all transport which uses OIL or GAS
Number Five: Ban all products made of PLASTIC.
Number Six: Plant two million trees EVERY WEEK… starting TOMORROW.
Number Seven: Place your farmlands, rivers and lakes in GOOD WORKING ORDER.
Number Eight: Stop construction of all new roads, buildings and houses and divert all workers to CLEAN UP THE MESS you’ve made of your land, rivers and lakes.
Number Nine: Stop relying on other countries for your merchandise. If you cannot obtain home-grown goods, YOU DON’T NEED THEM.
And Number Ten: End the tyranny of SLAVERY we witness in your lands. That’s it.”

“Slavery? We abolished that more than two hundred years ago!”
“I am referring to the slavery of ANIMALS. You have ten years to complete steps one to ten.”

“How can we do all that in ten years? It’s impossible!”
“I think you’ll find a way, when the alternative is the COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR EARTH. Oh, and to show we mean business, just take a look at YOUR MOON this evening. Goodbye.”
*
After Light Beam has gone, Susan rushes back in to see the PM.
“Oh Boris… are you okay? I’ve brought you this.” She hands him a brandy, which he gulps down in one.
“Who on Earth was that?”
“I bet it was Nigel Farage’s work… it’s got all the hall-marks of his tricky business.”
“You’re probably right, Susan.”
*
At dinner that evening, the Prime Minister is sitting with wife Carrie and son George.
“Boris… you haven’t touched your food… and you look terrible! Whatever’s the matter?
“I’ve had a bad day, Carrie… I need an early night.”
“Well, don’t go to bed too early… there’s an eclipse of the Moon this evening.”
“The Moon? That’s what this weirdo mentioned earlier. ‘Take a look at your Moon this evening…’ she said.”
“What weirdo?”
“Oh, no big thing… we get them all the time… it’s part of the job. The Moon turns red, doesn’t it?” “Right… sort of brick red.”
“Well, maybe it’ll turn green tonight,” Boris grimaced.
*
Later that evening. Carrie is standing outside at the back of the house, looking up into the night sky. Boris is lying on his bed upstairs.
“Boris, Boris… the eclipse has started! Come and watch!”
“I’ll watch from the window, Carrie… still feeling quite tired just now.”
“We were wrong about the Moon… it’s not red at all! And it’s nearly disappeared into the Earth’s shadow already. How long do these eclipses last?”
Boris makes a phone call, then opens the window to talk to Carrie.
“I just checked with Michael… he knows about these things. He says no more than two hours. The record is around one hour, forty-five minutes, apparently.”

Three hours later. The phone rings. “Boris… I’ve got Amanda Solloway on the phone… she sounds rather concerned.”
“Okay, I’ll take it. Amanda, what’s up? I thought you’d be watching the eclipse.”

“Boris, this is not an ordinary eclipse of the Moon…”
“Well, it does seem rather long… and it hasn’t turned red yet…”
“Yes, that’s because it’s gone!”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Who knows? All I can tell you is, the Moon’s not where it’s supposed to be right now…”
“Who says so?”
“The Astrophysics departments at King’s College London, Cambridge University and NASA. The Americans have pinged the Moon, and it’s definitely not where it should be.
“Pinged?”
“They send sound waves towards the surface of the Moon, which bounce off and are then received back on Earth. By equating the time difference with the speed of sound, they can calculate exactly how far away the Moon is from the Earth.”
“So how far away is it then?”
“It should be a quarter of a million miles away. But the sound waves have never come back, so we’ve no idea where it is. The Moon has GONE!”
“It can’t have gone! It’s just shifted position… that’s possible, isn’t it?”
“They’ve sent pings in every direction imaginable from observatories around the planet, including the Southern hemisphere. And if the Moon had shifted, we’d still be able to see it from some location…”

The PM looked out the window in total disbelief. ‘Oh my god… this can’t be happening.’
“Boris? Boris? Are you still there?”
“I’ll get back to you Amanda… talk later. Susan, do you have the number of that strange woman-person-thing who called here earlier…?”
“Yes, I’ll text it to you.”
*
“Ah, Mr Johnson Boris… how did you enjoy the eclipse?”
“What have you done with our Moon!”
“We’ve taken it away. But don’t worry, it’s safe. You can have it back after you’ve complied with our directives.”
“And what if we don’t… or can’t?”
“Then bye, bye Moon. It really is a very nice Moon, and many other races have admired it. The Crulians in the Andromeda galaxy, for instance. They lost their own moon during an asteroid storm not long ago…”
“This is madness!”
“Yes, I know. Destroying your own planet in the quest for more and more material wealth is absolutely crazy!”
“I don’t mean that!”
“I know you don’t. But until you see things our way, you will not survive as a species. You can have your Moon back after you’ve completed the ten steps I gave you. I am en route to France now, then on to Washington… au revoir!”
*
The Next Day. “Good morning, I’m calling from the office of the President of the United States… Mr Biden wishes to return Mr Johnson’s call yesterday.”
“Ah, I’ll just see if the Prime Minister is available…”
“Joe, it’s good to hear from you. What’s all this Moon business about? I was watching the eclipse last night, then the Moon never came back!”

The President sighed deeply. “Well Boris, what can I tell you? Our Moon really has disappeared. It’s not where it was yesterday, and we can’t locate it anywhere in the solar system. It doesn’t make any sense at all…”
“But we can’t just lose the Moon! What about the impact this will have on the Earth? The Moon regulates the tides, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yes it does… amongst other things. I’ve just been talking to our science people about it. They say we’ll be more vulnerable to asteroids hits; the days will be significantly shorter; the climate could go haywire, and there could be a devastating effect on sea life. Do you know anything about someone called ‘Light Beam?’ I have an appointment to see her today… it sounded rather urgent…”

“Be careful Joe! She caught me with some sort of taser yesterday… she could be dangerous. She told me to look at the Moon last night, and then it disappeared. Take her words seriously!”
“Don’t worry about that, Boris… we’ve got water-tight security here…”
“Did you say Watergate?”
“No! Water-tight! Ever since the Capitol invasion last year, we’ve really tightened up security on all levels. Oh, she’s arrived… talk later…”

‘Oh, my god… what is going on?’ Boris sighed to himself as he stared at the piece of paper on his desk – the one presented by Light Beam… the ultimatum. He shook his head. ‘We can’t do all that in ten years…’
*
The next morning, the Prime Minister assembled his Cabinet at 10 Downing Street for an emergency meeting.
“… And so, everyone, that really sums up the situation we find ourselves in just now. A bit of a bummer, I know. But we have to deal with what’s on our plates… and that’s pretty much how it is. Any ideas?”
The room was silent for a moment. Members of the Cabinet were in a quandary about how to tell the PM that he’d completely lost his marbles… and not just one or two: the whole damn set. Eventually, Stephen Barclay spoke up.
“Aliens, Boris? You’re seriously telling us you believe in aliens?”
“Well, we’ve got to face the facts, Stephen. As I already said, a woman calling herself ‘Light Beam’ told me to watch the lunar eclipse, and hours later the Moon was gone. Then she claimed: ‘We’ve taken it away!’… meaning the Moon, of course. You’ve all heard the office and phone transcripts, I take it?”
They all nodded. Some sighed, a couple smirked, and one (The Minister of State) couldn’t contain his laughter.
“Boris… please tell us this is a scene from the next series of ‘Yes, Prime Minister’! It’s hilarious!” “David, please… we have to take this seriously!”
“Come off it, Prime Minister… are you honestly saying this is the handiwork of aliens?”
“What other explanation do you have?”
“It’s a publicity stunt… the sort of thing Nigel Farage would do…”
“Or maybe Darth Vader?” grinned Rishi Sunak.
“Rishi could be right, Prime Minister,” Priti Patel smiled. “Didn’t Light Beam zap you with her ray gun yesterday?”
“Oh now, come on you lot… this is a very serious matter! We’ve lost our Moon, for Christ’s sake! Let’s have some realistic suggestions. Your thoughts Ben?” He turned to face the Minister for Defence.
“They’re all talking nonsense, Prime Minister… namby-pamby claptrap about ‘aliens’. You’ll be calling up the Guardians of the Galaxy next! I’ll tell you who’s really behind all this: The Taliban. First Afghanistan, and now the Moon. They’ve hidden the Moon behind hundreds of their flying carpets because they don’t want us to find their Lunar missile base…. mark by words!”

The Prime Minister shook his head, burying his hands in his blond mop of hair for a minute. Then he sighed and looked up at Michael Gove.
“Michael… please bring some sense to this matter; do you have any intelligent suggestions?”

A twisted smile formed on the face of the Minister for Housing. “As a matter of fact, I do Prime Minister. Given that this ‘alien’ is undoubtedly foreign in nature, I suggest we ask the Foreign Secretary for advice.”
“Liz?” Boris said, wearily.
“Prime Minister… if this ‘Light Beam’ person really is from another World, representing an unknown race of alien beings, then this is a wonderful opportunity to learn from an intelligent, highly advanced, alien civilization. We should therefore prepare, at the earliest opportunity, an exploratory mission to her planet, to enable us to understand their culture, and learn about their social and economic systems, modes of transport, and – in particular – how they have managed to maintain their environment in good working order, without it falling into the chaotic mess that plagues our own planet.”
“Okay… very good advice, Liz. And then what?”
“Oh, then we wipe them out… erase them from whatever galaxy they reside in. We can’t have any alien races threatening us like that… it’s just not on.”

The Prime Minister looked down at his papers, shaking his head. He was surrounded by idiots. The room went quiet, until Alok Sharma, the COP26 President, spoke up.
“It seems to me, Prime Minister, that no matter whoever or whatever placed that list of requirements on your desk yesterday afternoon, we should accept it with the utmost seriousness, and try our very best to achieve those goals in as shorter time as possible. Perhaps then, and only then, we’ll get our Moon back.” He stopped, looked around the room, and noted the nodding heads.
“That’s got my vote – totally,” said the Secretary of State for the Environment.
“Here, here!” said another; and “I agree with Alok,” another still.
“Okay then,” replied the PM, looking around the faces of his cabinet. “We’ll put together a task force, with Alok, Priti and George heading it, and then we’ll get to work to nail this ASAP. We can’t make a mistake on this one… not after wine-time Fridays…”
*
The aliens disconnected their Earth live-feed device, and smiled at each other.
“Good job, Light Beam,” said one, giving her a hug. “I didn’t envy you venturing into the human’s World,” said another, “and it was a good thing you went in disguise. Just imagine if they’d seen you as you really are! They could have had you for dinner… literally!”
“Yes, well done, Light Beam,” spoke her father. “If these humans do destroy their own planet, it could have an adverse impact on all life-forms in the Galaxy – not just in this solar system – and we can’t have that. We are all connected, after all.” 

*****
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