The third emergency meeting of the People’s Council since the arrival of the alien ship was in full swing. The Hall of the Political Bureau was boiling over with voices trying to get themselves heard over the chaos.

“Silence!” Chairman Patek Lham shouted. He was a huge Jerrassian, with silver hair starting to show on his neck. “Silence!”

There was little reaction, until Tomar Felt, the Minister of the Interior, stood up next to him, waving her large arms into the air to get the attention of the participating ministers and their assistants.

“Silence!” she shouted as well. “If there’s ever a time we need to show a united front, it is now. Please calm down and let us talk about these events like adults.”

It took a few minutes, but eventually the pandemonium ceased as the ministers, including the Minister of the Interior, returned to their assigned seats. Only Chairman Patek remained standing.

“Twice we have debated how to respond to the aliens,” he said, once his voice could be heard again. “Twice we have been unable to agree. But things have changed with the Joless-kvar attacking the alien ship. We do not know anything about the aliens’ psychology. We do not know how they will react to the attack. Do they understand it was the act of a single nation, or will they blame us all?”

A murmur of agreement spread through the attending ministers. Despite his hatred for Patek, Namir All shared the sentiment. He found the aliens utterly fascinating. Their arrival, their technology, their very existence had the potential to change Jerrassian society for the better. Imagine how much could be learned from them! He assumed an advanced race like them had rejected all notions of personal wealth and had successfully implemented a universal utopia ruled by peasants and workers. This was the chance for United Jerr to learn from them and become the society of his dreams.

“I believe this situation presents us with a unique opportunity,” the Minister of Defense said, standing up from his seat. “As we’ve discussed before, the arrival of the aliens poses a threat to the continued rule of this esteemed body. Their presence here presents new ideas to the people, new ways to think. And a people who dares to think new thoughts is a people who might begin to think dangerous new thoughts. Thoughts that do not align with the policies of this body.”

He wasn’t wrong, Namir thought. But he was right for the wrong reasons. While Minister Dareem feared the aliens were a threat to the People’s Council because they might turn the masses into shopkeepers and business owners, Namir believed the aliens would turn out to be a threat to the Council because they would show Chairman Patek the errors of his ways.

“The Joless-kvar tried to shoot down the alien ship,” the Minister of Defense continued. “Had they succeeded, we would not have needed to have this debate. The future rule of the People’s Council would have been ensured.”

That, Namir thought with an ironic smile, he should not be so certain about.

Minister Dareem was about to finish delivering his argument. “We could use a launch site in a friendly country on the other side of the world, and shoot down the alien ship using our own missiles. Having already been attacked by the Joless-kvar, the aliens would surely blame them, not us.”

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Namir was boiling over with rage. It was a stupid argument, for a multitude of reasons. Minister of Defense Dareem was not fit to serve the great people of United Jerr. In Namir’s opinion, he was an idiot, and should be put out of his misery. If United Jerr successfully managed to shoot down the aliens, they wouldn’t be around to blame anyone, whether they knew who the perpetrators were or not. And if the attack failed… Well, they were smart enough to build ships capable of traveling between the stars. What reason did Minister Dareem have to believe they were stupid enough to just assume—without investigating—that whoever shot at them the first time was also the ones shooting at them the second time, despite the rockets having different designs and being launched from a new location? And then there was the little matter of the Terran Federation. If the aliens were suddenly killed, surely someone from their homeworld would come looking, and that would not bode well for the Jerrassians. Also, beyond nationalistic hubris, what reason was there to assume United Jerr would succeed when Joless-kvar had failed with the same task?

Namir All leaned forward to whisper a few well-chosen words in the ear of his boss, the Minister of the Interior.

The debate that followed was intense, but in the end, Minister of the Interior Tomar succeeded in her argument. Minister Dareem backed down.

“There is another issue of significantly greater importance to the continued rule of this Council,” Minister Tomar continued, after Dareem Kvar had sat down. “There are certain things we do as a country that the aliens would not benefit from knowing. I’m mainly thinking of two areas: certain military operations we had to perform during the Great Patriotic War might not be correctly understood by them, and then there’s our research into atomic weapons. It would be to our advantage if the aliens don’t learn about these subjects.”

From the benches, there was more than one voice of agreement. The Minister of the Interior laid out her plan. “First of all, we need to ensure the aliens understand that our actions during the war were out of necessity. The special military operations in Fatar-mon and Toylar-var were conducted because those nations were planning to invade us. The Crimson Legion was sent in as peacekeeping forces, to protect our ethnic brethren from human rights violations committed by our neighboring countries. Of particular importance is that we never mention to the aliens the vacation villages we established in the pacified territories. It is imperative that they do not see us as aggressors. We do not know how they would respond if they got the wrong impression of United Jerr.”

Namir sneered as he heard her words. No, the Minister of the Interior wasn’t wrong—it was important to protect the forced labor camps. But it churned his stomach to think of the motherland giving the capitalist pack interned there food, clothes, and housing. They had no place in the perfect society he and the Jerrassian Liberation Front were working toward. The labor camps should be rebuilt into extermination camps, and to do that, their existence had to be protected—the Minister of the Interior was right about that. Only then could United Jerr cleanse the new additions to the motherland from the capitalist vermin of Fatar-mon and Toylar-var.

Minister Tomar continued her speech. “In terms of our atomic weapons program, that is to be kept secret at all costs. Should our esteemed colleague, comrade Dareem, be right about the aliens, and the need arise to one day fight them, using atomic weapons might be our only hope of winning such a fight. Thus, our plutonium enrichment program must be accelerated, protected, and kept completely hidden from the aliens.”

The Minister of the Interior was now reaching the end of her speech. “To that end, I support Chairman Patek’s position that United Jerr should respond to the aliens’ message with one of our own, sending them a carefully worded peaceful welcome and an invitation to meet here in Kerrma-non. Furthermore, I demand that this body increase the funding and authority of the Committee for Jerrassian Security, to enable them to better monitor the citizens of our great nation during this time of crisis, and give us advance warning should we see signs that unauthorized information is being leaked to the aliens.”