Up, Up and Away

Eleanor finished telling her story to the president.  She was sitting in the Oval Office with nine members of her crew standing behind her, all naked.  The president had secret service agents behind her, all clothed.  It was an amusing contrast.

Eleanor got the impression that the president had found all this bare flesh a bit distracting.  Her eyes definitely kept returning to look at Eleanor’s breasts.  Why is it that so many gay women are attracted to me, she wondered.

But the president was politically astute and had a grip on the situation.  It was not expected that they’d hammer out all details of an agreement allowing the Earth to join the Federation in one session.  It would be many months before everything would be settled, and negotiating teams from both sides would be involved.

But there was one thing, one test, that had to passed before they could proceed, one offer that Eleanor had to make to the president.  There were two conditions that had to be met before anyone from Earth could participate in the Federation.  The president already had met one of those conditions by being female.  There was one other thing she had to do.

So it was they emerged from the White House to confront the television cameras of the world, the president accompanied by her wife.  The president approached a bank of microphones.

“People of Earth,” she started.  “Today is a momentous day in the history of our planet.  We now know we are not alone in the cosmos, that there is intelligent life throughout our galaxy.  I have been having informative conversations with Commander Eleanor and her crew and both sides are prepared to go forward with Earth’s application to join the Interstellar Federation.  As a token of goodwill on behalf of the Federation, Eleanor has offered my wife and I the opportunity to visit their spacecraft currently in orbit about our planet.  But first we have to prepare for our journey.”

The president was known for being dressed in conservative business suits.  Pantsuits, Eleanor remember the Americans called them, a name that she still found funny even after having been away for all these years.  But today, she and her wife were dressed in simple summer dresses.  They stepped in front of the microphones and in unison started undoing the belt ties holding their dresses in place.  In front of the cameras the dresses fell to the ground.  They were now as naked as Eleanor.  The crowd gasped in surprise.  Then, accompanied by the crew members of Mother Knows Best, they all walked out of the grounds of the White House, down to the parked shuttle that was going to take them up to the ship waiting overhead.