Climate wars 20 - it's holiday time!

Many celebrations are tied to nature. It's a pity so many humans have forgotten.

Captain Cyan

Maya swam into the officers’ lounge and sat down with a sigh of relief. “I’ll be glad when the human holiday season is over”, she said. “But the kids have had such fun learning about all the feasts the humans have at this time of year, and how many celebrations are tied to natural phenomena - bonfires and candles because the days are cold and dark, feasts because it is time to cull livestock, for example

Mimi came in, looking just as tired as Maya. “I’m knackered. You’ve had it easy. I’ve been down shopping for the menorah, kinara, candles, tinsel, a Christmas tree and ingredients for Christmas cakes and latkes, pieces of coal and finding a suitable safe site for bonfires with plenty of wood. I’m still trying to work out what to do about Boxing Day. Then there’s Hogmanay / new year. Fortunately we can generate snow in a dry room, I wouldn’t want to transport it up.”

“And the kids have had such fun learning about all the celebrations, eating the food, making greetings cards, putting up the decorations, singing carols around the bonfire, and experiencing snow! They even enjoyed learning about why Earth has seasons and the effects on agriculture. And why humans celebrate during the darkest days of the year.” Mimi stretched all her tentacles to the limit.

“It’s such a pity that so many earthlings have lost contact with nature, particularly the ones in power. Without that knowledge, several of their celebrations are empty and meaningless, just an excuse to party and to buy stuff. And they either don’t know or don’t care what they are doing to the climate, when they would surely know if they got out regularly into nature, and grew at least some of their own food. Many kids think food comes from supermarkets!

Captain Cyan entered the room.

“Hi, Captain, ready for your big role tomorrow?” asked Mimi.

“I’m not sure red and white will look good on me,” replied the captain, “And I don’t have a deep voice for the ‘ho, ho, ho’. This is not what I expected to be doing as a captain. I think I’ll get someone else to do it. It doesn’t look difficult, but would use time I can ill afford. The Clidens could make their next move at any time. Has anyone worked out how to arrange some reindeer, yet? Or chimneys, for that matter.”

Mimi replied: “Chimneys are easy, we just use the supply tubes. We’ve decided to have no reindeer on the ship, the kids can watch the NORAD Santa tracker instead - it hasn’t been defunded - yet. That will be very educational for them, and we’ll record it so we can reproduce it in the future. We’ve also decided against singing more carols as nobody knows them. Anyone wanting to experience that sort of thing can bring up an earthside stream. We’ve brought up some globes and Maya’s been using them to show Santa’s likely route.

Maya added, “The kids have had great fun making and wrapping presents for each other, making decorations, putting up stockings, researching those celebrations and baking the easier kinds of food. We’ve cooked or programmed the harder stuff. We made it clear, no presents for the officers. If you get one, the usual response is, ‘thank you, but you shouldn’t have’.”

Well done all of you, and I hope you are enjoying yourselves. You deserve a break, and since a lot less gets done down on Earth in the holiday season, now is a good time to take it a bit easier. I just hope that the Clidens aren’t planning to take advantage of the laxness down below. Maya, can you, Kaurna and the children research all the celebrations throughout the year and all around the world that relate to natural phenomena, please? Then Briar can try and popularise them down on social media.”

...

Number Two brooded at the helm. He’d been lucky to escape execution for not doing better at COP30. His pale skin made him lower class and he was lucky to have made it to his current position - luck he could well have done without. Though, they were running short of qualified officers. He hated this. He hated what he was doing to the people of the planet below, but he wasn’t ready to die for them. And it was so unnecessary, the whole ship’s crew could land on an uninhabited island with an active volcano and feed well, and move from island to island as new volcanoes popped up. And they could take trips to oil wells to harvest more food and fuel there. There would be more than enough resources freely available to fuel their transporters and shuttles.

And many people down below were partying and enjoying holidays when all he had was work and more work. He’d tried going down and joining them in disguise, but he could not get into the party spirit. And he dared not take alcohol, he might drop his disguise.

So, he plotted and planned while waiting for the earthlings to stop celebrating and to go back to doing things he could influence, and getting bombs in place while the humans were being so lax.

...

Late that night, all the officers not on duty crept around the ship, disguised as Santa Claus, filling stockings. Not one of them got caught, as Djindans can be very stealthy, and the children were so worn out by the excitement that they were deep asleep.

Merry Christmas, everyone.