1949. A guilt trip

The arrival of certain story numbers on this blog sometimes contains an unsuspecting significance. In this case it is Story 1949. 1949 was the year I was born. The number surely demands something special?

Let me reveal something that maybe you never suspected.

Some mad people (they are mad people because I happen to know that things like that simply don’t happen) believe that at some stage they were abducted by aliens and experimented upon either in the alien space craft or taken to the home planet to be examined. What nonsense! I should know, because I am an alien implant.

I volunteered on my home planet to undergo a seventy-seven year or so stay on Planet Earth to better ascertain whether or not the planet would be worth taking over. Thus was I implanted in 1949 (Earth date) and born into what appeared to be normalcy.

Twenty years had not passed when I received a message that warfare on my home planet had erupted and, to make a long story short, my planet and all its inhabitants had been destroyed. This was not only sad but it created a problem for me because I no longer had reason to report back about Planet Earth. Nor do I know what I should do once the seventy-seven years or so are up. I can’t go on living here getting older and older without transmogrifying into something that Earthlings might consider strange.

So that’s where I’m at, at the moment. I’ll gladly take suggestions, but, PLEASE, no dingbats making ridiculous claims about “I too am an alien”. I know a good alien when I see one, and there are many charlatans on Planet Earth. There are perhaps more charlatans here than on any other inhabited planet in the universe.

Incidentally I know of only one other space alien currently on Planet Earth. She lives “overseas” and I have nothing to do with her. She’s from another planet from me altogether. Why would we need to work together? Can a horse and a cow join together to pull the same cart? (That is a saying once used on my home planet). Apparently she’s here to study cloud formation for a doctoral thesis. They’re so backward where she comes from.

There you have it! The number 1949 has certainly made me face the music. I’m actually feeling quite guilty that I haven’t told you about all this before.

1831. The invasion

When Isadore bit into the apple he had no idea how it would change his life. It was just an ordinary apple. Not a green Granny Smith, but one of those rosy red ones. They have a name, but goodness knows what the name was. It was the apple season so the fresh apple was crisp and crunchy.

Unbeknown to Isadore, there was a caterpillar buried deep in the apple and somehow he had avoided chewing the creature and had swallowed it whole. He was utterly unaware of what had happened.

The caterpillar however wasn’t just an ordinary caterpillar; it was a device created by aliens from another planet, and this was the beginning of their infiltration into planet Earth. Once swallowed this device would send back to the alien invaders every detail of Isadore’s life. And Isadore wasn’t alone in being investigated. There were dozens; in fact, hundreds; in fact, thousands; in fact, millions.

There wasn’t a detail the caterpillar wasn’t designed to gather. And Isadore and all the other victims were to be saddled unknowingly for the rest of their lives. It was an alien invasion. No one saw it come. No one saw it operate.

The alien’s name was Google.

1762. Alien infiltration

No one knew exactly where they came from. Earth visits by exoplanet aliens were becoming so common that the whole thing was humdrum. There were millions of different types of aliens visiting from all over the cosmos; so many that Earth decided to set up some sort of registration office. Each “species” of alien could await their turn. After all, they were basically “coming just for a look”. Like Earthling tourists in the old days, nothing was added to the Grand Canyon simply by having lots of inquisitive tourists. It would be different if an alien species came to share its technology with Earth.

Most exoplanet species didn’t mind the registration and visiting timetable schedule. A few exoplanet species however had evolved as deviants. Like the Earthling Communist Chinese of a previous era they had stolen the technology (in this case from other planets) – which was how they had the wherewithal to travel to Earth. Basically, when it came to being scientifically practical, they were relatively thick.

An example would be when they tried to bypass the registration setup. Some dumb exoplanet genius had devised a plan to infiltrate Earth by having a whole army pose as Earthling mailboxes. They were to stand motionless at every house gate and observe. (It must be added here for those who scoff, that these particular aliens were masters of transmogrification). They had missioned to Earth a team to capture the template of the basic mailbox. Moulds were made of the prototype. Thousands of mailboxes were manufactured. Each mailbox was imbued with the being of an exo-alien. The possessed mail boxes were placed at every earthling’s gate, replacing the mailboxes that were there.

There stood the aliens, motionless and observant; “spying” would be a better word. That was until Mrs Bridie McDonald of Chattanooga went out to check her mail. She was the first in the world that day to do so. She discovered that her mailbox no longer had any moving parts. They had ended up doing what the Japanese had done in an earlier Earth era: the Japanese had made trumpets with a mould so that there were no moving valves.

Every infiltrating mailbox was thrown onto a non-carbon-producing bonfire, and the dumb invasive exoplanet species were banned permanently from Earth. Way to go, Earthlings! Although, as an addendum, Mrs Bridie McDonald of Chattanooga did in later years admit to having found her mailbox particularly attractive – which might well explain why later that year her son was born with no moving parts.