Red Space
Captain John Miller stepped off of his lunar module, his feet digging into the soft lunar surface. The great moonscape that stretched before him flared with a great white intensity, contrasting with the black horizon of outer space. A spectacular view of Miller’s terrestrial home floated in the black vastness that engulfed the sky - the home to all who came before him.
Miller’s thoughts were interrupted by the astronaut standing beside him, who violently shook his shoulder. The astronaut, Lieutenant Adam Thomson, shouted into the radio and pointed a gloved finger to the horizon, where a shiny and pointy object stood in the distance.
“Miller! There’s something due west of us, I can’t make it out.” said Thompson, his voice crackling over the radio.
Miller turned around and lifted his visor, looking at the object in the distance, back at his colleague, and once again at the object.
	The spacemen exchanged curious glances before striding across the white plains towards the unidentified object. As they came closer, they saw an orange-clad figure in the distance, clutching a patch of red in his hands. The astronauts squinted at the figure and the red thing he held in his hands before recognizing the identity of their lunar guest. They shouted in bewilderment, and as the orange man raised his arms, aiming the flagpole at the ground, the two astronauts began flailing their arms in anger and bounced as fast as they can towards him.
	The orange cosmonaut turned sideways and haughtily looked at the two dancing Americans before firmly planting the flag into the dirt. He looked back at his lander and motioned to his colleague, who was in the middle of climbing down the module ladder. Distracted by the commotion, he clumsily slipped on the last rung and collapsed with the gracefulness of a fat ballerina into the white soil.
	“You commie bastards! This crater is ours! Were here first! Leave!!” Shouted Miller.
	The Soviet stood and looked at the ranting Americans through his visor with a blank expression, not only because he couldn’t understand English, but Miller’s words did not travel through the vacuum of space in the first place. Therefore, he promptly responded with a gesture. Fat middle finger thrust into the air, the Russian shouted a profanity that only reached the sides of his helmet.
	Meanwhile, his clumsy comrade, helmeted face now firmly planted into the dirt, picked himself up just in time to see his partner and the American buckled on the ground and wrestling each other. The two spacemen sluggishly swung their limbs at each other, kicking up large clouds of white dirt. The cosmonaut shrugged, wobbled over to the scuffle and threw himself on top, adding himself to the ball of violence.
	Lieutenant Thompson, who had only been idly standing around somewhat confused, watched the three roll around in the dirt like sumo wrestlers in a bouncy castle. Unsure of what to do, he toddled over to the red flag and lifted it out of the ground, gripping it sideways in his hands. The two soviets looked up from their scuffle just in time to see the American breaking the pole over his knee and promptly kicking white dirt onto it, just for good measure. The cosmonauts scrambled up from the ground and furiously waddled as fast as they could over to Thompson, who was already hopping away in distance. Miller, still lying on the ground, hardly even bruised from the pillowfight he had just been in, picked himself up and sneaked away back to his module.
The Television shuts off.
“Soviet televised networks saw the whole thing. The prestige of this program has been humiliated! What are we? A bunch of bullies on a kindergarten playground? Such behavior is unacceptable!”
Mr. President eyed the men around him, coercing nods in agreement out of them. With a snap of his fingers, a rotary phone carried by an intern whose only job is to carry phones to important people is brought to his desk. Within the next minute, Mr. President is shouting into the phone, presumably with the director of NASA on the other end of the line. After finishing a very thorough rant, Mr. President cut off the director’s apologetic whimpers by slamming the phone back onto the cradle.
	He once again eyes the staff that surrounds him.
 “We have come close to nuclear annihilation too many times, and I refuse to reignite conflict that we have so delicately prevented with this agreement. I want a memo distributed! No fighting in space!” he bellowed.
Before he even finished speaking, several interns sped out of the room to carry out his demands.
	The President then spun around in his oval office chair as he waved his arm in disgust, dismissing the staff out of his office.
Later, in the backrooms of the Pentagon, several big generals held a meeting to discuss foreign space policy. Among them, a fat general with a very large cigar hanging from his mouth stood up, his numerous oversized medals and ribbons clinking together as he lifted himself out of his seat. Military cap low over his eyes, he rotated his bulky mass as he looked around the room, and eyed the all the deputy generals and colonels before speaking.
He raised a copy of the President’s memo.
“Let’s get down to business. Fuck the president.” He grunted, in a casually treasonous tone.

The crumpled piece of paper delicately drops to the floor.
“He’s a limp-wristed pushover and probably a commie sympathizer as well. The only thing this god damned treaty does is allow those pinko assholes to lob missiles at us from space. We have got to take the initiative before the Soviets establish an even bigger foothold on our moon.”
	Another general stood up, even fatter than the previous.
“We oughta just drop a bomb on this son’ bitch! The moon is completely uninhabitable anyway!”
The room erupted in concurring grunts.
“No, this requires tact.” The first general responded with a fat hand lifted into the air.
“First off, those commie fucks won’t be messing with our boys anymore once they know they’re going to be packing heat. Any sneaky ruski bastard that tries anything will get a face full of good old American lead. We’re also going to conduct some good old fashioned espionage on their lunar bases. God knows they’ve already filled ours with enough bugs to fill a damn flea market.”
	He paused to take a very satisfying puff from his 1954 corona cigar and released a large cloud of secondhand smoke into the air. The general then pointed to a large topographical map sitting in the center of the room.
“The soviets have a base set up on the Almanon crater approximately 50 clicks north of our touchdown zone. We’re going to send them a little something to show we mean business.”
	Captain John Miller, now demoted to a low grade terminal clerk at NASA for his humiliating display on his last mission, looked at the mission control screen with yearning sadness as he watched Ares IX trailblazing off into the auburn sky. He eyed a newspaper beside him with mild interest bearing a headline in big bold letters:
AMERICANS TO OFFER PEACE GIFT FOR LUNAR INCIDENT