Lady Violet

In July of 1856, eighteen members of the palace guard disappeared with the king’s daughter. At first, it was thought to be a kidnapping.

There was never a ransom. There was never a body. None of them were ever heard from again. Since the royal line would live on through the prince, searches for the princess stopped after four years and she was declared dead.

The fantastic truth was never discovered.

The princess had kidnapped the guards. She was sleeping with three of them and kept the other fifteen going with promises of love. They were her harem. She’d been planning her flight to freedom for months.

Unlike her silly girlfriends, she had actually paid attention in class and had asked the generals on her father’s staff about strategy and other military matters. She’d asked different members of the cabinet about disguises, shipping routes, investigation techniques and standard espionage.

They had thought her thirst for knowledge precocious and cute.

The eighteen guards were her first crew for the robberies that wound their way across Eastern Europe that year. They’d been killed by the end of that year and replaced with others.

She robbed her way to the Mediterranean where she stole her first ship.




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Ambassador

I didn’t even realize that I was surrounded by Secret Service until the ambassador showed up. I suppose that’s because the service was doing their job. There was a moment when I realized that the area around me was a little silent compared to the usual hubbub of an airport. I looked at the gentleman next to me. He was listening to his personal stereo. I looked around and it seemed that everyone in my immediate vicinity was listening to their personal stereos.

Except they all only had one earphone. And the ones that weren’t staring at me were scanning the airport. I put down my newspaper.

The ambassador flowed up to me. Keep in mind this was in a terrestrial airport on old Earth. Aliens like the ambassador still caused quite a stir.

Earth had been contacted and accepted into a pantheon of other intelligent life. It was a great day for humanity. They’d stood back, watched, voted, and finally gotten in contact with us once a positive verdict was reached. They said that we would have an ambassador from our planet join the confederation of planets. It was reportedly like an intergalactic UN.

An ambassador from each of the seven hundred and forty-six represented worlds, systems and races would be billeted on Earth. There would be human aides, security, and interpreters. Everything had taken place with a well organized speed. They’d done this many times before. The alien ambassadors were spread out, a few for each country, to gain information and exchange cultures.

At first, it was seen as an invasion. Paranoid humans protested and shouted loudly on television. A few sabers rattled from the more militaristic countries.

That was until cancer was cured. That was before AIDS was made harmless. It was before the matter converters were stationed all over the world and hunger became a problem with a solution.

It was a very intense experience for humanity. Within a year starvation and serious disease were being significantly lowered and in most cases eradicated altogether. The aliens had known from the start not to touch our monetary problems but they were altruistic in matters of life and health. They even presented us with plans for population control and helped speed up our space programs so that we could alleviate some of the crowding down here by colonizing other planets in our solar system.

This was all still happening. First Contact had taken place over four years ago. We were still in the grip of intense world-wide change.

I was catching a flight to Chicago to see my father for his birthday.

I was here in the airport waiting for my flight when the ambassador approached me.

I was familiar with this ambassador from the times I’d seen him on television. He was unusual even for the alien life forms we’d been exposed to lately. He was made of cohesive living energy and thick transparent gelatin. He was a two-meter tall clear tube of goo with his internal organs completely visible floating around inside him. He looked like a massive, slug-like tentacle of sentient hair gel with guts.

His internal organs resembled a few anchovies hooked up with some sun dried tomatoes and all strung together like a string of Christmas lights dangling from a large green brain.

He had a sentient energy field crackling around him that he used to communicate and handle objects. At first people thought that he was telekinetic.

He slithered up to me and told me that me that I’d been chosen to be Earth’s ambassador for the Intergalactic UN.

I stared at his brain because he had no eyes to look into. He reiterated that I was the Federation’s choice after a year of debate amongst thousands of super sentient beings and that I shouldn’t argue.

I think he would have been smirking if he was human. If he was a he.



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