2. Coffee Interruptus-1
454 Words
2. Coffee Interruptus
‘Aliens?’ queried the army chief, one of many ‘chiefs’, ‘heads’, and ‘representatives’ sitting around the long glossy boardroom table at Number 10 Downing Street, London.
‘Aliens,’ confirmed the Prime Minister, leaning back in her chair and letting one eyebrow arch on her perfectly made-up but elegantly mature face, as if she had just been informed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been found dancing on his limo, in nothing but women’s suspenders – unamused but somehow not totally surprised.
She assessed the thirty faces around her. Most looked stunned, a few looked convinced April the first had come early.
‘So,’ she said raising her petite form and crossing the plush carpet to pour herself a coffee at the sideboard, ‘who has the protocols?’
There was a chorus of silence.
She looked up to see nonplussed, blank, and troubled faces. She picked a troubled face and pointed at it.
‘Tell me the protocol.’
The man in the suit blanched, and then his colour rose all too rapidly, ‘I’m very much afraid, Prime Minister, that we don’t have one.’
The Prime Minister calmly carried her cup and saucer back to her place at the head of the table and sat down.
‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘I mean,’ answered the man looking very much as if he wished someone else would step up and take over, ‘I mean that we...don’t have one.’ He glanced wildly around at his colleagues, they all shrugged and pulled silent faces as the Prime Minister stared carefully down at her cup, and stirred the coffee with precision.
‘So what you’re telling me,’ she said with deadly calm, ‘is that – despite scientists on television telling us to be worried – in the event of the appearance of extra terrestrial life-forms, benign or hostile, we have no plan.’
The faces in the room looked from one to the other, at a loss.
Slowly and hesitantly a junior minister at the back of the room lifted her finger.
Everyone stared at her, and she watched with trepidation as the silence finally caused the Prime Minister to look up. There was the faintest invitation to speak.
‘Well, the director of the ‘Alien’ movies said we should, “run for it”.’
The silence grew deeper.
‘Right!’ exploded the Prime Minister, suddenly. ‘This will not do! Will not do at all! Within an hour I want a bank of screens and ten more chairs in here – filling them, will be the top experts on all things extra terrestrial, futurist, space travel, astronomy, and physics-related. Do I make myself clear?’
The whole room nodded.
The man formerly victimised raised his voice bravely, ‘Do you have any particular request, Prime Minister?’
The woman sipped her coffee and replaced it on the saucer with a subtle c******g sound.
‘Yes, Nigel, I do: please, use your noddle.’
With this she waved her hand dismissively and called for the line to Washington.
‘Let’s see what Hollywood has got up its sleeve,’ she murmured.
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- Writer
