A Shock

President Jacob Lamais was looking through the last week's relatively minor bills, trying to keep up with his position, when Head of Pinguioris Investigative Affairs(PIA), whose name was Herbert Sterling, knocked on the door and entered without waiting for a reply.

"Sir, I have your DNA report," he said.

"And why did you see fit to come yourself? Surely you have more important things to do, Mr. Sterling," the President replied, irritated. He had too much else to do without interruptions.

He tossed some papers over the president's work and said seriously, "I've decided you should be told about this."

The President looked at him with new interest. "What is this about? I'm listening."

"Well, it appears you have a pure bloodline," he said.

"What? We don't have bloodlines, Mr. Sterling," the President was very wide awake now.

"It was a secret your grandfather managed to keep during our country's early years. Why we advanced too quickly to be overwhelmed. Those of this bloodline aren't from this planet. Your grandfather crashed here with some other survivors nearly 125 years ago. He had us, the PIA, secretly continue looking for what happened to our home world. It's been a long time, Mr. President. We think the war that consumed our home is long over. We must find out what happened eventually. And it'll be a good opportunity to begin mapping out the galaxy, settling it, etc. If those we left behind are still there, well, we can figure it out with them. It was the luckiest luck our ancestors had in finding another habitable planet with the race of Adam upon it."

The President leaned back in his chair and gazed out a window. He was shaken down to his core. Shocked beyond belief. "So how much of our culture is from this world?"

"Amazingly, we have kept most of it intact," Mr. Sterling said. "That's why many of our neighbors seem so strange. Even our language is not from here. Our historical linguists have been very confused over this."

"Surely we must tell the people. It's not like it was in his time, when he assumed emergency powers. And what about the other nations?" The President's face contorted in anxiety.

"We were told to hide this until we made contact with them again, and told them who we are," he said.

"And who are we? What country did we flee from? Why did we flee?"

"Iowa, sir," he said. "And we fled nuclear holocaust."