by Don Cook
“Her platforms, and her conduct, have been all-too questionable during this campaign. Faith in the democratic process among Americans, already depleted, has taken a severe blow because of this election, yet oddly enough, passions are running at a hostile high in this electoral contest.
“My interview, as far as Earth’s pubic is concerned,” Khraa/Astra said, “is to seek out the real Mallory Stanton and who she thinks she is, her motives, her plans, her policies. All well-and-good for a true investigative journalist. But the real reason for this interview is to determine an even more dire, more all-important question: are Mallory Ignacia Stanton and Shrion marauder Mephistula one the same being?
“To determine this without arousing suspicion, I have ingested some vegetable juice mildly spiced with onion powder. The aroma of onions expelled in the breath of someone who has ingested some, even if the person used something like a breath mint to disguise the onion-breath, has often acted as both truth serum and a shield of the person’s mind against a Shrion, provided the Shrion in question was within an enclosed space that spanned no more than 20 Earth-feet. This is well within the confines of even a large luxury condominium suite. It is my hope that this will subliminally force Stanton to divulge her true nature, if she is indeed Mephistula.
“I will also self-implant a pill-sized yet complex covert multi-scanner in between my eyes. This device will shrink and work its way under my skin, and conceal itself so that I can take sensory readings to determine if Mallory Stanton is the same marauder who killed my husband, my children, my brother, and my friends and colleagues of the Rubiaar IV expedition, and laid flaming waste to that world. If she is, she would be a mortal threat to the Earth. End of entry, date-time stamp, subjective timing. Copy?”
“Affirmative,” Blue 1’s computer spoke.
Her clock read 12:49 PM. Khraa/Astra waited tensely for Stanton’s people to arrive.
A knock came from the door. Khraa/Astra answered it.
“Ms. Astra Downey?” said a tall, closely cropped blonde butch woman dressed in a blue pantsuit who stood outside Khraa/Astra’s apartment.
“Yes?” Khraa/Astra asked.
“I’m Katrina Stormgren, Stanton’s assistant. I’m here to take you to Stanton’s condominium.”
“Okay” Khraa/Astra said, mentally sensing that Ms. Stormgren’s motives were sincere. “I’ll get my gear.”
Khraa/Astra closed the door, and returned a moment later with Astra’s small video recording equipment bag slung over her right shoulder.
“Stanton said to bring cameras” Khraa/Astra said. “Well, here’s my camera gear. Let’s go.”
Khraa/Astra closed and locked the door, and left with Stormgren for the elevator.
When she and Stormgren reached the building’s front rotunda, Khraa/Astra saw Stanton’s stretch SUV limousine, which both impressed and uneased the extraterrestrial, as Stormgren opened the passenger side door, and motioned for Khraa/Astra to enter.
“Shall we go?”
“Okay” Khraa/Astra said, and then put her bag on the rear seat before she entered the luxury vehicle as she thought to herself, said the spider to the fly. Stormgren closed the SUV’s door once Khraa/Astra and the bag were inside.
“Back to Stanton’s place, Jane,” Stormgren spoke to the handsome, plain-looking uniformed female chauffeur.
“Yes, ma’am,” the female chauffeur said, before she drove the limousine onto the street.
STANTON’S LUXURY CONDOMINIUM BUILDING
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA USA
1:29 PM CENTRAL TIME
The building where Stanton stayed while in Minneapolis was an imposing structure denoting ownership by the great, near-great, and the powerfully corrupt. As the limo arrived at the towering high-rise, Khraa/Astra knew that she was about to enter the proverbial belly of the beast, and both relished and feared the prospect as the vehicle stopped before the main entrance awning.
“We’re here” Stormgren said, before she and Khraa/Astra exited the limo.
Khraa/Astra, with her bag slung over her shoulder, followed Stormgren into the rotunda, which radiated with elegant opulence that would make lesser humans meekly succumb to wealth’s corrupting charms. Khraa/Astra, who had dealt with the great and near-great in her own part of the Universe, steeled her innermost self by using both her own common-girl sensibilities and the country-girl values she acquired from Astra to combat the temptations of pricey largesse akin to those of Stanton’s ilk. A uniformed, balding mildly effeminate 60-something male concierge sat at his desk.
“This way, Ms. Downey” Stormgren said to Khraa/Astra, as she motioned towards the elevator, where they were greeted by a similarly-uniformed short dirty-blonde mild-mannered male elevator attendant. After they entered the seductively corrupting opulent elevator, the doors closed.
“Stanton’s suite, Ms. Stormgren?” spoke the wimpish elevator attendant.
“Yes, please” Stormgren said haughtily to the attendant, who removed from his right coat pocket a special key that allowed access to the penthouses. He inserted it into the penthouse floor keyhole and turned it.
The elevator began to ascend for a ride that seemed to last for a minor eternity. Khraa/Astra was bitterly unimpressed.
How in Perditia does this attendant put up with Stanton, Stormgren and their kind?!, Khraa/Astra thought to herself angrily, as the elevator ascended so far upward that she wondered if she was nearing the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Or does he actually get some sick masochistic pleasure from being psychologically abused by his bosses?! And this planet has labor guild movements?! It seems that Earth’s “Jeeves” haven’t heard of them, and don’t want to! Sadly, most Earth executives want to keep their “Jeeveses” in psych-chains!
After several seemingly interminable minutes that caused intimidating Orwellian tension for Khraa/Astra, the elevator reached the 44th floor.
“Ms. Stanton will meet you now, Ms. Downey” said Stormgren. “This way.”
Once the doors opened, Khraa/Astra sheepishly followed Stanton’s masculine-looking female aide through the sinfully opulent corridor to Stanton’s condominium.
The door of Stanton’s penthouse suite opened. Stanton met Khraa/Astra and said to her, “I have been expecting you, my dear, but remember: Be careful what you wish for, because you shall get it!”
Stanton laughed devilishly, as Khraa/Astra nervously breathed deeply to infuse the air with the onion on her breath as a sodium thiopental-like method of ferreting out Stanton’s true nature.
[RECONSTRUCTED FROM THE OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF
THE BULL-FREE TRUTH WITH ASTRA DOWNEY
RECORDED IN DEN OF PENTHOUSE SUITE 44-P4
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA USA,
MAY 24, 2:00 PM CENTRAL TIME]
KHRAA/ASTRA: “Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this special edition of The Bull-Free Truth with Astra Downey. I’m your host Astra Downey, speaking to you in a rare interview with a woman who has accomplished megatons in her life as a high-power attorney and a tireless activist for women’s, racial, and marital rights. She has been First Lady during the presidency of her Tennessee-born husband Jeff Stanton, Secretary of State, and the storied senator from the Great State of Massachusetts. And, if destiny is rewarding to her, she could add to that list the next President of these United States. I allude to none other than the woman affectionately known as ‘La Mis’, Mallory Ignacia Stanton. We are in conversation with Ms. Stanton from her condominium in downtown Minneapolis today.
[Khraa/Astra turned to face Stanton.]
“Thank you, Ms. Stanton, for taking time out of your obviously busy schedule for this interview today.”
STANTON (with polished demeanor): “It is a pleasure, and please, call me Mallory.”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “Why, thank you, Mallory. I’m much obliged.
[Stanton nodded briefly, as Khraa/Astra’s onion-breath began to subliminally yet quickly take its effect on Stanton.]
“Now, Mallory, as I had alluded to e
arlier, you have such an impressive résumé that even feminist pioneer and Femokrat Magazine Editor-In-Chief Golda Stein-Hertz has stated that you have achieved in your lifetime alone what would take three empowered women to accomplish apiece. What makes you such a —?”
STANTON: “Workaholic? Astra, I am a driven woman whose level of inner personal empowerment is equal to ten thousand nuclear reactors operating at maximum capacity at once. And I refuse to have my own Chernobyl of the soul.”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “What do you credit for this powerful drive within you?”
STANTON (with concealed rage and a sigh): “My parents, my mother in particular, wanted me to be a prim-and-proper debutante ever since the day I was born, never wanting me to be anything but a Stepford Wife-type hostess who would make Jackie Kennedy look like Cleopatra. They wanted me to dress, to talk, to act, to look and to think like I was the belle of the ball all the time, even if I was just in my bathrobe! They wanted me to go to the right school, meet and marry the right man of means, be a refined breeding cow, have nannies raise the kid or kids, and sit so damn pretty that I’d be better off stuffed and mounted!
[Heavy sigh.]
“Then, one summer, while I was at an all-girls summer camp up in Massachusetts when I was 14, I sneaked off with a girlfriend to the nearby lake one moonlit night to do some skinny-dipping. It was then and there that something came upon me — a spirit of the lake, of sorts — and it, or rather, she told me to be the rebel I was made to be, that I had it in me, and that I should take that special spirit and seize the day. That’s when the real Mallory Ignacia Stanton was born.”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “As was mentioned earlier, you’ve racked up such an impressive list of achievements that you’re a legend, even envied, among other women of stature.
[Stanton nodded with a self-satisfied yet demurely restrained grin.]
“There have been past attempts made by other women, most notably Hillary Rodham Clinton, to break through the ultimate glass ceiling and attain the Oval Office.
[Stanton nodded again with a demurely restrained grin with an attitude of hyper-self-confidence subtly denoting an “if-only-Hillary-had-my-secret-stuff” attitude.]
“On a personal note, Mallory: Why do you, personally, yourself, want to run for the Oval Office, beyond the often-stated reason by women such as yourself of wanting to “strike a blow for sexual equality?”
STANTON: “You mean, my personal reasons for seeking the Presidency?”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “Yes. A lifelong dream? A desire to serve —?”
STANTON (waving right index finger, with indignant outrage): “I serve no one! Never! I’m an alpha female! Always have been, always will be! No two ways about it! And this, this idea about gender equality?! BULL!!! I want women to be all-large and all in-charge with me at the very top! Women need a strong-handed queen bee like me to attain feminism’s real aim! That, Astra, is an absolute females-only matriarchy — and I was born to do just that!
[With every last word from Stanton’s lips, Khraa/Astra was revolted, as her fears of Stanton were actually being Mephistula were being vindicated one by one.]
“Gender equality?! Yeah, right! That’s just a ruse, a catch-phrase, disguising what that old Bible-thumping cootie Herbert W. Armstrong from way back before your time, Astra, had described the movement to pass the old ERA —”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “You’re taking about the failed Equal Rights Amendment.”
STANTON (with angrier pride): “Yes, that old ERA. And like I said, that old British Israelite preacher-geezer Herbert W. Armstrong got that one right when he described what that movement was really all about: (Emphatically) ‘Eve — Rules — Adam!’ But with medical science’s increasing advancements in DNA manipulation, why the hell stop there?!”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “And if women refuse to do what you want them to?”
STANTON: “You’ve no doubt heard of rumors about those FEMA camps set up as American gulags? Well, that’s where any defiant woman, along with all members of man-kind, will end up once I am elected! And I will have the human race genetically reengineered by scientists willing to do my bidding for big, big gigabucks —!”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “But… most of these geneticists are male.”
STANTON: “You know how Jimmy Jones dealt with his cult, aided by some sweetened drinks laced with cyanide? Once we’ve completed the job of creating the next step in human evolution, I give them killer coolers, then it’s bye-bye, geek-boys! Hail Homo sapiens femina —!”
KHRAA/ASTRA: “But… What about freedom, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, justice for all — the essence of the American way —?!”
STANTON (angrily arrogant): “Justice, schmustice!! Humans don’t know jack about justice, or what humanity truly needs! Feminism, Astra, is a big, fat-ass myth, a hoax, a mega-conspiracy, just one of the plethora of tools concocted over the eons by the Illuminati, Opus Dei, the Freemasons — you name the group, they’re all behind it!
[Stanton chuckled quietly, yet maniacally.]
“Yes, people! The Illuminati and their sister secret societies created feminism, or at least facilitated its creation, so it could have women rise so far, with womankind’s individual and collective egos inflating more and more, ever larger, until — [Stanton slapped her hands together loudly!] — BOOM! The New World Order pulls the rug right out from under all womankind, and all those decades of activism swirl right down the toilet! The same goes for all the other ‘ism’ movements!
[Khraa/Astra, dumbfounded at Stanton’s arrogant bluntness, does not know what to make of her assertion.]
“I’m running, Astra, to be President so I can seize the day from those crazy, cruel Illuminati conspirators and their ilk, and then remake the world in my image! Mine! All mine! And that, Ms. Downey, is the duty and destiny of womankind! And if the world does not agree… well, then, I’ll just have to have to nuke the whole damn planet!
[Khraa/Astra was alarmed, as her spy-implant transmitted all its readings to her brain, warning Khraa/Astra that Stanton was indeed Mephistula.]
“And you can bet your last dollar that I’ll do it! I’ve just gotta get my hands on the nuclear button or whatever the hell a President would use to launch the missiles! People, it’s either my way to the future or the highway to the cemetery! Your choice!”
[Stanton laughed mildly at first, then with increasing maniacally demented loudness for several minutes.]
“Wow!” Stanton said, just after the interview with Khraa/Astra was over, around 4:30 PM Central Time, and the effect from Khraa/Astra’s onion breath made Stanton severely and increasingly fatigued. “That was one exhausting interview! And usually I’m the one who exhausts the interviewer! Even Mike Wallace told me I plum wore him out when he did a piece on me for 60 Minutes many moons ago. And it was Wallace who usually made someone feel like a multiple murder suspect! I gotta rest for a day.”
“Why, thank you, Mallory” Khraa/Astra said, as she took down her three-cellphone camera setup and packed her equipment in her duffel bag.
“Like I said, I’ll have my chauffeur drive you home. I love a challenging interview like the one I had with you. Thanks for the pleasure, Astra.”
Khraa/Astra finished packing up of her equipment, picked up her duffel bag, and slung it over her right shoulder as she said with unease, “The feeling is… Mutual.”
Stanton quipped, “I’m so bushed, but not the George W. kind.”
Both women laughed at Stanton’s political joke.
“Really, Astra,” Stanton said, dazed and disoriented by Khraa/Astra’s onion breath tactic, “I’m so tired I could sleep for a week! I think I’ll cancel my speaking engagement with the Chamber of Commerce tonight and tell them I’m too exhausted.”
“I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“They’d better! Ms. Stormgren?!” Stanton called out, which resulted in Stormgren entering the den.
“Yes, chief?” Stormgren said.
“Make sure Ms. Downey gets back to her hom
e safely, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
Stormgren motioned towards the door. “This way, Ms. Downey.”
Khraa/Astra, with her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, followed Stormgren out the door.
APARTMENT 1214, BELLA VILLA APARTMENT COMPLEX
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA
7:14 PM CENTRAL TIME
“At 2:00 PM today, Earth’s North American Central Time, as stated in my previous log entry,” Khraa/Astra began her daily log-entry, “I interviewed Mallory Stanton for today’s special edition of The Bull-Free Truth with Astra Downey, to determine if Stanton was indeed the Shrion invader Mephistula who used her squadrons to massacre Rubiaar IV into flames, slaughter my expedition, and murder my family. I have just completed editing of the interview footage into final form for podcast.
“I knew that this interview would pose its share of very grave risks. Therefore, as a protective measure to prevent Stanton from becoming wise to my identity, and to thwart her for several Earth-days from learning with whom she had spoken, I ingested vegetable juice seasoned with enough onion powder to barely linger on my breath and used what I exhaled to spread subtle onion matter through the air in Stanton’s condominium so that she could tell only the truth and nothing but the truth, and still not suspect a thing.
“My suspicions were correct. Based on both Stanton’s bizarre answers and readings obtained by the removable covert multi-scanner well-concealed under my skin between the eyes, there can be no doubt. Mallory Ignacia Stanton and Mephistula are one the same. Mephistula’s past rhetoric and Stanton’s during today’s interview are identical.
“How will I stop this mad political strong-beast? I truly wish I knew. End of entry, date-time stamp, subjective timing.”
Khraa/Astra ended her log-entry, filled with fear for herself and for the Earth.
“Oh, Mike,” Khraa/Astra lamented into the air, “my sweet courting-lord. I wish I could tell you what I know of Stanton and the mortal threat she poses to you and your world. I wish you could help me, but as much as I want to tell you… I can’t!”
