Immorternity - Chapter 19: Audience
Created | Updated Mar 26, 2023
Chapter 19: Audience
It took some time and black tea to collect a trumpeter to officially open the audience. Since nobody wants to be woken up in the middle of the night alone, the trumpeter decided to go with the mash-up version of the 'Long Reveille'. The one where he marched around and tossed the trumpet in the air every eighth bar, to catch it and play on with ever increasing volume. For good measure he also added snatches of the "fire alarm' and 'Charge!' bugle calls, because he never got to play those otherwise.
Once the neighbourhood had been made aware of the impending audience, fire and cavalry attack, the trumpeter retreated and the window was lifted open to reveal the Prime Minister. She was wearing the hallmark Victorian blue dress that came with Number 10, for which nowadays only few have the body-shape to pull off. (Mis-interpreting the meaning of that last statement could get you into serious trouble, if you were to try. Like being stabbed, shot, quartered and then sued to death at the same time). She was also the youngest-ever PM of the Realm.
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After the collapse of the old-school political parties last year, being elected Miss June in one of the more prominent tabloids combined with a general election fatigue had been enough to gather the required percentage of the small number of votes that was eventually cast to come to power.
Miss June's slogan 'Join my party, you can cry if you want to!' had been trending for weeks when launched. The usually empty pageant promise to aspire to world peace had finally set solid high-heeled boot on parliamentary ground… So far, nobody had managed to find out what the real name of the PM was. They stuck with calling her Miss June instead, after a brief spell of Prime Mistress. (This was deemed too confusing by the tabloids, given the large number of mistresses some of the previous PM's had cultivated).
After a quick chat with the guard, the Prime Minister turned her attention to Ava, Eddy and Wolfgang by proxy. 'Hi there. What's up?'.
After another hurried conversation with the guard and counting to three for composure, this was rephrased as: 'Lo fellow country-minors accompanied by a magnificent specimen of hound. What bringeth thou here at this late hour?' ('Too much? Be concise, man! I'll talk 2025 again…'). In the meantime, one of the Prime Kittens had managed to conquer the Eastern slope of the dress and gave Wolfgang an adoring look. The other one was still tangled in the lower lace.
Ava hid a massive yawn behind her arm before speaking.
'Hello, your Excellent Prime Minister person. We have travelled far and long to bring you tidings of which the nature is yet to reveal itself.'
'Can you skip the protocol and get to the point, please? Taking this dress off will take me an hour and I would like to go to sleep before dawn.'
'OK, long story short: Aliens that have been living here for millions of years want us to stop meddling with them. Can you arrange that? Preferably on a worldwide scale, to save us all the traveling…'
The burst of laughter erupting from the guard was cut short by a glower from the PM.
'Do you have proof of this?'
'Do talking wolves count as proof?' asked Wolfgang.
'Not per se, but they do call for a change in perspective,' The PM answered promptly.
Shrugging off the black-and-white kittens across the black-and-white tiled floor (making them invisible half the time), the PM left the window, in order to open the front door.
'Please come in. I suppose we need the long story after all. Preferably without the press listening in, if aliens are involved.'
