Photo credit: Cadbury’s Smash tv commercial
I have rarely ventured into genres such as sci fi or fantasy (and honestly, I don’t think this qualifies as either) but when you are given the prompt ‘Area 52 ‘ to work with, the best thing to do is to try and go with it, so here is my humourous attempt at sci fi. The tinny aliens made me think of the wonderful series of Cadbury’s Smash instant mash potato ads of many years ago, hence the photo. As for the subject matter, it was very topical, and in fact almost a month after the US elections, we all live in hope…
The alien tapped its metallic digit on the images of the planet Earth where the ten chosen ones would land on what would be their 34th mission, although none amongst them had been before. The rate of attrition of their early explorers, many of whom failed to return on completion of their assignments, had at first alarmed the Command Council, as Earth offered a comfortable alternative to their planet with its shrinking resources. Then they saw the benefits of having members of their race walking undetected amongst humans and so a sanctioned programme of infiltration had begun.
They now had one of their own planted at the highest levels of leadership in the human world, but they were struggling with an unstable skin pigment and language patterns as the agent, despite a number of recalibrations, made wildly inaccurate statements and his hair tones and hues were ever-changing.
The objective of this trip was his extraction and decommissioning. During his time as leader of the free world he had failed to win the hearts and minds of the people with whom they had hoped eventually to engage. Their goals had been set back as those humans that followed their agent did not have the intellectual capacity to understand and accept the existence of an advanced alien nation.
The screen switched from the map to visuals of the agent, in full human form, holding forth at a large meeting with much flag waving and shouting. Proficient in the language of the humans, they listened, ashamed, as one of their own made nonsense of his important role. As a race, they prided themselves on their sophisticated and advanced skills, but inexplicably, Agent DT had not risen to the task he had been set and had let them down badly.
How were they to have any credibility when they made their presence known, and it was discovered that this man was one of them? They had hoped to erase his poor performance from the memory of the world and so together with members of their own who had previously defected to Earth, they had been working in the desolation of Area 52 where all their previous missions had been able to come and go without challenge, on a virus that was meant to do just that. However, the humans had reacted badly, and the experiment was going horribly wrong. They got sick with a breathing disease, and many were dead. This had never been the aliens’ intention.
Agent DT was mis-managing the entire epidemic and had not responded to their instructions.
They were now working furiously on an antidote, but their efforts were being thwarted by Agent DT’s backward claims that bleach, UV light and other primitive technologies could help arrest the pandemic.
Their leader turned to the gathering.
‘Agent JB, are you up to the task? Have you taken the lessons learnt from the mistakes of Agent DT? Let’s go over that acceptance speech once more. We cannot afford to fail, this time.’