Author: Janet Shell Anderson

Years ago, a grad student reviewing data from a radio telescope in Ohio, found indications that a signal, possibly from a ship in space, was among all the meaningless noise the telescope had detected. He marked “Wow” in the margin.

Alien Abduction! Little green men!! Hurricanes!!! World’s End!!!

Hurricane Elspeth’s bearing down on Perry Austrian Baldwin, the Vice Pres, and his estate, Florabella, in Florida. I’m Eudora Pennifer, divorce attorney, Perry’s fifth cousin. He’s in a panic. Someone just got another Wow signal on the Ohio State University radio telescope that had been mothballed for ages. Something out there is angry.

POTUS had some kind of episode tweeting here at my cuz’s mansion in DelRay/GulfStream, at three a.m. last night. Did something out there pick up the transmission?

Has POTUS infuriated Little Green Men? He’s called whole continents shitholes, worse. What exactly did he tweet? Is there going to be divine retribution, or just lunch?

The atmosphere’s tense.

In the Coastal Waterway at the end of the lawn just beyond Perry’s yacht, the talking manatees have heard about the Wow signal. A teacup, pot-bellied pig strolls by and says something in German. Rainbow marmosets scream obscenities, and all Perry’s hybrid pygmy mammoths are huddled at the shallow end of his infinity pool and refuse to come out.

I’m here to talk to Perry about the Wow Signal. Does it mean my cuz is Pres? Was POTUS too crazy?

Hurricane Elspeth’s bearing down on us all, but the jets are on full blast in the tub upstairs, the Pres–or is he ex Pres–is still tweeting.

Perry’s trying to get me to explain the 25th Amendment to him. At the infinity pool under a blackening sky, he keeps looking at his hands. What has he done? The mammoths look alarmed, as if they sense he has committed a crime. The pig makes a nasty mess by a jacaranda.

I don’t think Perry has a clear idea about the 25th Amendment. No one ever understood the first Wow signal. The Tweeter in chief will probably dry off, insult someone, get on AIRFORCE ONE.

One thing I know from years of coastal living.

That hurricane will come.