Chapter 4: Origins

Turning back to Bronwen he said, “There isn’t much to tell, really. Nobody knows what to do in these circumstances. The military want to blow them out of the sky before they land. The Church of England wants to send a missionary as first contact. The Government probably wants to send a canvasser with a Party Manifesto. The Civil Service want to send a Customs and Immigration officer to search their space ship for excess duty-free, and to quiz them on their status as refugees or economic migrants. Nobody knows why they are coming. At least we have contacted them, but nobody will tell me how, and more worryingly, nobody will tell me why they won’t tell me. As to how this all started, it was an odd decision by the Queen herself, she decided that as her governments had always held strong views about other governments that was well and good in respect of other nations on earth, but was too limiting for interstellar relations. She wondered how the average politician would react to meeting a ‘hive mind’ for example, or a species which had no concept of sex.”