Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

INTERIOR: The Great Throne Room, Rigel IX.

Sitting on his throne, looking bored while reading reports on the state of his empire, is HSUB EROG, Emperor of the Nine Stars. He looks up as his Grand Councilor, WETTHAM SENOJ, enters, holding a sheaf of papers.

EROG: What is it, Senoj?

SENOJ: New reports from the team on Earth, sire. It seems they have collected information on the last seven Presidents of the political unit dubbed, "The United States of America".

EROG: Oooh, more Presidents! Wonderful. Tell me about them.

EROG leans back in his chair, getting ready to hear about his favorite subject. For some reason he's fascinated with Presidents of this tiny country on this puny planet.

SENOJ: Keep in mind, sire, that the humans' calendar still defies our best efforts at translation. We cannot determine with precision the dates that these men served as President.

EROG: Fine, fine. Get on with it.

SENOJ: Yes, Majesty. (He holds up the first piece of paper and starts reading.) First is President Bill Mitchell. He was a fairly nondescript leader of his nation, following what was called a "conservative" agenda.

EROG: Conservative?

SENOJ: Yes, Majesty. It's rather like when you bombed Altair IV without asking the Milky Way Governance Council's position.

EROG: (shaking fist) Stupid galactic peace advocates, I hate them so much….

SENOJ: Umm…yes. Anyhow, in the third year of Mitchell's Presidency, something strange happened: he began to exhibit signs of what the Earthers call "liberalism".

EROG: Liberalism?

SENOJ: Yes, Majesty. Something like the time you raised the taxes on all members of the Royal Class in the Nine Stars and cut funding to the Starfleet so you could pay for all those schools and finance your decree that all citizens shall have equal access, without cost, to our Medical Dispensation Units.

EROG: Oh, yes…(smiles, remembering)That really made Duke L'mbaw angry, didn't it?

SENOJ: He's still not speaking to you.

EROG: (waves hand, dismissively) Go on.

SENOJ: Yes. President Mitchell's first sign of "liberalism" came when he suddenly discarded the agenda of a meeting of his top advisers and began cutting funding from obscure government programs to preserve funding to a program for children that he had visited the day before. Then, he announced an initiative in which any citizen of the United States who wanted a job could get one.

EROG: Oh, yes, I remember that! When he announced it, didn't that woman news agent roll her eyes?

SENOJ: Hmmmm? (checks the report) Oh, yes, Helen Thomas. She rolls her eyes at everything. No one on earth pays it any mind.

EROG: Very good. Go on.

SENOJ: President Mitchell's chief-of-staff had a disagreement with the President and resigned, but he later announced his own bid for the party's nomination and, in so doing, provided the Earth press with information on a number of illegal activities perpetrated by the Mitchell Administration.

EROG: Did Mitchell have him executed?

SENOJ: No, Earthers don't do that, except for in the Earth enclave called "Texas".

EROG: Remind me not to visit that enclave.

SENOJ: You would die there, Sire. Their average ambient temperature would kill you.

EROG: So what happened to Mitchell?

SENOJ: Interestingly, Mitchell provided evidence before a grand conference of the United States Legislature – "Congress", actually – that implicated the chief-of-staff. And then, President Mitchell suffered some sort of medical emergency while speaking.

EROG: Like the one I faked last week?

SENOJ: (scowling) His was real.

EROG: Ah, yes……

SENOJ: In any event, President Mitchell lapsed into a coma and later died. His Vice President, a man named Nance, took office and completed Mitchell's work.

EROG: Hmmmm. Anything else?

SENOJ: Well, this is curious. A year later, Mitchell's wife – now free to marry another – joined a man who bore a very striking resemblance to the deceased President, and she eventually became his wife. And this too is odd: a filmmaker named Oliver Stone speculated publicly that for some time before his death, President Mitchell had been "substituted" by someone of like appearance.

EROG: Like the time my twin brother and I—

SENOJ: (getting annoyed) Yes, just like that. Stone's theories were judged so laughable that Stone himself was forced out of the entertainment-centered city called "Hollywood". He later moved to a place called "Europe", where he made a film called "Any Given Sunday", about a game the Earthers call "football" – except for the citizens of the United States, where the word "Football" refers to a completely different game. "Any Given Sunday" became the most successful film in Earth history, and yet when it played in the United States, it strangely did very little business.

EROG: Strange people, these Earthers.

SENOJ: Indeed. President Nance, by the way, served out Mitchell's term and decided not to run for re-election.

EROG: He gave up power? What a fool!

SENOJ: It happens.

EROG: Not here, it doesn't. Well, we will finish this later. I have that new Star Carrier to dedicate. Biggest ship we've ever built, and it's guaranteed not to be lost in interstellar space. We're calling it the Titanistic.

SENOJ: A fine name, sire. Later, then.

To Be Continued….