“How far behind?” the King demanded.

“About five years.”  The King heaved.  He looked menacing.  ”Should be noticing a drop in the numbers, sire, sometime next week?”

Before the King could overreact yet, the Head of I.A. went right back to his balderdash matter-of-fact tone.  ”We have immediately put a hold on all bartering worldwide.  Ninety-five percent of our resources are currently in the hands of merchants.  We believe that in stopping trade and eventually taxing all merchants, and if necessary seizing all bounty, the government would be able to regain control of the economy.  Because right now you’re virtually powerless.”  He really just wanted to say, ‘but that is the least of your problems,’ but that sounded insulting.

“Will that work?”  The King was extremely worried about his stress levels.  Ninety-five percent, wow.  And on top of having to deal with those stupid tradesmen controlling everything his world was running out of food.  And it didn’t look like it would be easy to get more.

“Theoretically.  But we don’t believe there is much concern for that now.”

The King could tell the Head of Internal Affairs wasn’t telling him everything.

“Er…” he started.

“TO BLOODY HELL WITH THIS!” the King bellowed.  ”How am I to be expected to run an infertile world?  And with less than five percent control of the economy?  Our government doesn’t control the people anymore!  The merchants do!  We were their security, their fallback!  We were supposed to be taking care of these people!  And now what?  How are you not overreacting to this?  We are royally screwed!  We are totally screwed as far as humanity goes, man!  What are we gonna eat?”  There was a plea, a desperate tone in the King’s voice, and it was momentarily easy to tell he was human.

“Sire,” the Head of I.A. started.

“Why is this happening?  Are you fixing this?  What the hell is going on here?!”  

“The sun is about to burn out.”  He spoke quickly and clearly, hoping he’d only need to say it once.

“Wha-what?”  The King didn’t sound so much like a king anymore, more like a little boy, lost, looking for his momma.  The Head of I.A. sighed.

“The sun,” he said, patiently.  ”It’s about to burn out.  The King said nothing.  His face was turning very quickly from purple to white.

Yes, the brisk weather was nice, but no more big fire in the sky seemed a little too cold for the King’s taste.

The first instinct of the Head of Internal Affairs was to pass any blame from his shoulders.  ”This is not my department,” he said.  ”The Department of Worldly Defense is currently developing an emergency situation plan that we hope will resolve this dreaded problem once and for all.  We had hoped they would have had a plan before the actual event of an emergency – but I guess they were too busy trying to make alien contact to really come up with anything.”  That was a joke they liked to kick around the office at Internal Affairs.  The Department of Worldly Defense – formerly “External Affairs,” had truly been out to lunch for the last century or so.  I.A., who was only five years behind, loved to look highly upon themselves and certainly felt that by comparison they job they were doing was top-notch.  The Department of Worldly Defenses thought the guys from Internal Affairs were a bunch of obsessive pricks.

The King remained silent.  He was quite pale now.

“Considering the extremity of our issue, and the lack of resources, and our very thin hold on the public – let’s put it this way, we have a bet going at I.A. and the odds are a thousand-to-one we won’t make it to the end of the bet.”

Still the King said nothing.  The Head of I.A. figured it was better than him shouting.

TO BE CONTINUED