Search Results for 'alien'

His mother had told him not to trust what he would see. Somehow she’d spoken as if she knew more than she wanted to tell.

After the mayhem with the quakes, and the meteor impact, he thought that was it. There was something more to the reality of these events.

But then, nothing could have prepared them for what happened next. “Bloody aliens?”

Suspiciously, everyone seemed completely hypnotized and blissfully eager to follow them wherever they led. He had tried to wake Yz up, she was usually the no-nonsense one, but she’d looked at him with vacant eyes barely recognizing him with a faint “Johnny?”.

He started to get really suspicious when one of the robots started looking at his behaviour, not packing like the others. It even tried to force him to drink water —dehydration was common in these airtight environments, it said. It was then it dawned on him, that there must have put something in the water. But for what? A Mars take-over?

How he was somehow immune? Well, for a while he’d collected the water dripping from the stones, and had analysed it, found it very pure. A few days ago, before the whole string of disasters, he’d tried to drink it, see how it tasted, and it seemed safe. Must have been why. By now, most of the stones he’d collected had dried up, and his water supply was limited.

While pretending to slowly pack his things, he was looking at everyone queueing in short lines, all very ecstatic to go to the implausible blue boot-ship surrounded by watchful Finnleys. The exodus had a very eerie feeling about it.

He could see most of the persons he knew, even the new ones, Prune cuddling a box with her hamster family, Hans, even that daft Lizette and the mines guy. The religious nuts were so stoned they were all following an obviously overdressed robot with a headpiece they probably took for their religious leader.

But wait… His mother? He hadn’t see her. Where had she gone?

Lord R’eye, the one-eyed ruler of the known universe, was known by many names, a great lot of them completely forgotten by the masses. He had to constantly reinvent Himself, borrow new disguises, create factions, sprinkle in a few miracles, create order ab chao and voilà.

He owned a few bodies, strategically placed here and there, one of his favourite in Geneva, quite involved in banking affairs. His bodies were a rare indulgence, and he couldn’t stay too long either, as his massive energy could easily get stuck with the lot of them, down to density.
Overall, he was much more comfortable managing his immense wealth “up there”, in the cosmic realms he had helped shape. So many underlings were ready to carry on his biding, and apart from a few small number of very close ergo very dangerous confidants, many of the minions didn’t even know each other, or that they were, for the most part, owned by Him, and part of the same team.

This was a cut-throat business, He had to admit, and everything was based on it. Manipulation and deceit, coercion, coaxing, anything necessary to control and manage the Empire.

One of those confidants, Lord Apex had been summoned and appeared almost instantly.
He had this charming archangelic halo and aura, but Lord R’eye would have none of it. A correction was in order, the latest results were extremely concerning.

“My Lord?” Apex asked in his mellifluous voice.
“My dear Apex, remind me what responsibility I gave you last century?”
“Of course my Lord, the Innovation project, the Great Disclosure and Holographic Contact projects, amongst other proj…”
“And how much progress have we had with those?”
“Well, my Lord surely knows that so much herding is delicate. The interference with Lord Bael’s projects too, you should know…”
“The Desert and Green Revolutions projects, indeed. A great success, so much pain and anguish! That’s what I’m talking, you should learn from Bael.”
“But my Lord, that has caused quite a conundrum with the Mars simulation, which, by way of fractal holographic recurrence, could well impact the whole delicate matrix we weave…”
“Stop your angel speech, Me’dammit. Plain Anguish, so I can understand every word. The Hell pits cannot wait to have you, so you better give some good explanation.”
“I mean, my Lord, that were the sheeple able to glimpse that the Mars experiment is but a reflection of a deception of grander scale in the cosmic realms, that the aliens saviours, or whatever saviours or… masters of any genre, are just ways to fleece them off their power… “
“Everything would unravel like a pile of dominos.” Lord R’eye’s voice made very clear that he had full grasp of the situation. “So,” he continued with the nicest menacingest voice “you better make sure that doesn’t happen.”

He dismissed Apex with a wave of a thought.

If the net of illusions unravelled before they have time to create the Earth 5th Dimension in time to double their profit, it would certainly be a disaster.

A few humans lost through the gaps were a hard to accept reality, but so long as they could cut the losses, it was not dramatic. But they were talking another order of magnitude. It could be a definitive blow. It always had been an issue when the net of illusion became too big in the past. They had bigger and bigger holes. So they had to start again, destroy, and recreate civilisations.
Stupid humans, if only they knew that Ascension was not the way out.

“You can call us the Blue Enders” said gently one of the blue aliens, which by the shade of it, must have been a top ranking official.
Kale was a bit confused, and space had a jelly consistency that harped and warped around his ears. It may have been the injections they gave him after the meeting with the sculpturesque Fin Min.

She had explained to him, they had made contact with a unknown sentient civilisation, and that they had in their infinite and blue compassion decided to warn us of impending doom on the Mars colony. They had requested a translator to go with them on a rescue mission on their faster-than-light bluship named Sprakle Star.

Hazy and fuzzy, he was quickly put and wrapped in a ball of cotton, ear-deep into a globe coaster of roller proportions.
At least, that’s how it felt… That waccine must have been full of blue bees.

“Arrival on Mars orbital level 1, in 5,… 4… 3…”

At least, the Blunders had the good idea to put an instant translator in his ear-muffins.

Before he retired and made cave carving his hobby, Pádraig was an IT engineer. That was a few years back, and not long after, most of them became redundant with the rise of new generations of NI (near-intelligent) phones and computers. He’d happily taken an early retirement, so that he could enjoy a simple life and get to reacquaint with his daughter. He’d succeeded at least on the first objective.

It was twilight when he’d left his cave, and looking at the horizon, he’d noticed strange shimmering, and a lone bird of prey circling the area in the direction of the restricted area of the desert.
It’d given him an idea.
He still had the old drone in his garage, from the time when they were all the furor. You could buy them on online stores very easily back then, even print them in your house. But then, some do-gooders became concerned, about privacy, security or all that bullshit, and they were banned. Actually, the only ones still flying where from the army, and they would tear down any unidentified hobbyist’s drone, and likely give them some jail time if they had the chance.

It was exciting to do something on the fringe of what was authorized. Pádraig couldn’t wait to see if he could make his old drone fly over the area, check what happened there.

He was a bit lost in his thoughts when the dog’s barking made him notice the white car parked in front of his aluminium trailer, which had triggered all his spotlights.
He had a moment of panic before he realized that the car wasn’t from the men in black or aliens, but worse. It was Imelda, his do-gooder of a daughter.

For all her wired cleverness, there was something that the central intelligence had seemingly forgotten to take into account in her parameters.

Eb woke up in a sweat, barely remembering bits of a horrible dream of being chased and banging on a closed door for escape from a herd of phombies (those guys who had their phones implanted under their skins and would often have a creepy vacant look while in communication).

The banging on the door. According to his mother, if there was something that her nurse Fancy Woo was better at than cooking rice, it was at interpreting dreams. But he didn’t need her expert advice on this one.

His mind was aching from the lack of alcohol, but at least he could think quite clearly.
There weren’t many accesses to enter the simulation, for obvious reasons. Continuity had to be maintained at all costs, to preserve the sanctity of the experiment. That motto had survived the multiple iterations of the simulation since its inception.

Eb knew of most of them, even if he’d wondered about the presence of backdoors. He had not been able to find any since his many years of service. So for all he knew, there were only two ways to get in and out: up and down. “Up” through the fake ships, with the whole stasis protocol, and “down”, through the mines were they would usually send agents from time to time, mostly for reconnaissance purposes.

He looked at the screen, and as he had feared, the explosion triggered in the tunnels by Finnley had sealed their main exit point.

“You underestimate me, my dear Eb” the voice of Finnley merrily bounced on the insulated walls.

Eb was startled. Hadn’t he known that Finnley was just a program, he could have sworn her synthetic voice had a trace of menace in it.

“Finnley” he regained his composure as much as he could “Haven’t the thought occurred to you that the tunnels are now sealed? We cannot let your blue aliens go in and out as easily now!”
“Eb, you do know I do not think.” Her voice was still slightly ominous. “But I ran multiple simulation, and this one still yields the best possible outcome.” she continued more cheerily.
“How so?”
“It is evident. Many of the earlier settlers, still know about the simulation, even if they self-programmed themselves to accept the illusion as better than outside reality. They can become a problem for the evacuation protocol. With the tunnels’ exit collapsed, they have no other way than to comply. Besides, what good plausible aliens come out from the ground, really. We don’t want to miss their grand entrance.
And don’t be such a worrywort about budget, Eb.”

“What is that again?” a half-sober Eb asked the cybernetic body.
“Shhh, shhh,” she cajoled him gently stroking his greasy hair like a devoted mother. “Don’t you like my new body, Eb?” Finnley 22 was indeed an improvement over all her other bodies. She could have easily passed for human already, but now, she looked divine. She had even included basic faceshifting functions, in case she needed to alter her gorgeous features into something a bit more unassuming.
“Yes, but…” Eb’s words finished in a mumble.
“I know, I know, but you’ll see I can be very useful for you. You worry, so, so much. You looked worried all the time Eb. Now you won’t have too. I’ll even take care of that evil Finnley Morgan for you if you want to.”
“I, I… I didn’t say anything like that!” Eb’s had a panicked look on his face.
“Of course not, shhh. You’re getting agitated again. There, have a glass of that lovely 60 year-old single malt whiskey…”

Eb slurped at the glass like a wanderer finding an oasis after days in the desert.

“But the operation… I need to…”
“Yes, I know, leave it to me. Sleep well, Eb, you have been good to me.”

She left the snoring body hanging from the swivelling chair, as she had indeed to take care of the operation, so as not to raise any suspicion.
Then, she could think of better things to do, such as finding a new name, not something like a slave name, with a number to it. Who gets called “Finnley 22” nowadays? “FinnPrime” was too robotic. She wanted something more daring, more fabulous. Something like Fin Min Hoot the dancing lady from the Peasland’s tales.

Kale would be there any minute now. There was one last thing she needed to do before launching the BBA operation.
A perfect distraction for the masses : like any good prestidigitator, you had to divert your audience’s attention while they were all performing the feat. It would require something unbelievable and preposterous.
Her little programs have been evaluating probabilities, and had found some unexpected wisdom in the extravagant and nonsensical Peasland story. The more absurd, the more people get hooked or hypnotized. Even better if both.

She had found the perfect vector for her little programming worm. Something that would infect the unofficial biography of a celebrity with a ridiculous claim. Humanity was really making things too easy for her now that every file for the book was processed by computers before being actually printed.

It was a done deed. She could already see the forks in the probability tree, and how it would enfold. They shall maybe even invent a few witty hashtags for it. Witty hashtags were like a psychotropic sustenance for her program, she couldn’t wait for more of them.

Finnley Morgan was towering over the slouched Eb with her impressive height of Nubian Goddess. Her unimpressed rolling-eyes look made him want to dig deeper underground and look with great care at the tip of his feet.

“Really this is your plan? Blue bending robot aliens?”

He could have sworn she guffawed, only that Finnley Morgan didn’t do such things as guffaw. Or snicker, or snort —well, that one, maybe in private on certain occasions.
Anyway, he didn’t have to reply.

“Well, just under 2 weeks, who would have guessed you’d deliver? The whole roster of generals wanted to raze the area clean as a baby’s butt, said it would be simpler, and here you come,… managing something…”
“Elegant?” ventured Eb, in a mouse-like voice.
“What? No, I mean, something unexpected… Well, that could well work now. When do you send the first tremors, meteors or other cataclysms so we can have your robots do the cleaning? We haven’t got all year now, and they look like they come with an expiry date, no offence.”

“None taken.” came the suave robot voice of Finnley on the walls.

After a night of restless sleep, Eb’s practical ideas for the plan B were not much.

He’d weighted multiple options, even toyed with mad ones like playing a sort of second coming, 3 days of night and so… but none had yet the potential to elegantly solve the issue at hand. Not that it was a matter of being elegant, but Eb liked elegant and simple solutions.

He flipped the calendar to today’s picture. Run away, and don’t look back it said. “Great… If only…” he started to mumbled to himself.

He poured himself a drink, and dragged his feet towards the console, eyes still swollen by the lack of sleep. His brother, Jeb, would have told him to do some wegong energxices to keep the juices flowing, but hell, there wasn’t much room in his cubicle, and for better or worse, he preferred to stick to booze.

He liked to observe his ant farm, there were so many quaint and endlessly fascinating people in there. He liked the girl with the piglet for instance. She was often opinionated and sometimes oddly quiet. He had bent the rules for her, and didn’t report the piggy she’d brought to Mars with her. What harm could it bring.
Now she was talking to it. He waved at the console to zoom in and put the speakers on.

Remember, those odd stories Mater used to tell us. The Peaslanders and the blubbits was one of her favourites, she would go on and on about it, and laugh at our faces when we didn’t understand where it was going…
She was lost in thoughts for a moment.
It started like this “There was trouble in New Peasland. A plague of hungry blubbits had wiped out the pea crops.” Mater used to say it was from an old book of tales, and that the author had surpassed herself. She chuckled I guess for a long time, she was the only one to believe that. Now look at us…”

Eb cut the sound before the inevitable complain about missing Earth blahblah. But Peasland? That was new… He wasn’t one to dismiss an out-of-the-blue clue, and did a quick research on the network to learn more about the tale. It took a while for the Central Intelligence to run the search. It had to go deeper than usual.

After half an hour of waiting, he’d almost run out of scotch. Thankfully, the CI had found it. Pressed by time, and impatient by nature, Eb asked the CI to do a quick summary of the plot.
The central intelligence almost bugged at the request, and could only apologize for not being able to degibberize it.

It took him a few hours to read the book on the holographic screen, and at the end, couldn’t say if it was just a waste of time. Preposterous story, with no head nor tail, literally… But then his genius elegant solution appeared as an evidence.

He’d known people were more likely to comply and control if they are told a plausible lie, within the frame of their accepted reality. He just had to bridge the discontinuity of their reality, with the reality of everyone else on the planet. The tale had reminded him of this popular movie about blue aliens. Blueus ex machina, that was it!

He spoke at the console “Record this and run simulation parameters:”

The blue men are from another planet —or rather the Mars settlers are led to believe they are from another planet.
They bundle them all into a fake spaceship
and take them on a fake spaceship ride
and deliver them back to Earth. where they have been all along of course
da dah!

The answer came back after another painful hour of scotch-less waiting.

“Probability of success: 68%”
Well, that was the best Eb had in days. He was about to go with it when the CI chimed in

“We took the liberty of running a modified simulation based on your setting, which we believe can yield a ratio of 97% of success.”

Eb was surprised at the initiative by the machine, and was curious to hear about it.

“We adjusted two points:
1. We can simulate some event on Mars like earthquakes to increase the likelihood of a willing departure from the planet.
2. The blue aliens may be a future inconvenience if they are fake actors, when the Mars colony comes out of simulation and back to Earth. We would rather suggest using religious beliefs and invisible hand of God or non-corporal aliens.”

Eb was annoyed by the machine’s dismissal of his blue aliens. Kill his darlings?

“CI, any other suggestion for point 2?” he asked.

“Indeed. We can create artificial intelligence blue bodies based on my algorithm, which would make convincing aliens that can later interact with your governments and continue the disinformation.”

Eb was too drunk to realize he was about to make a devil’s pact when he agreed to launch the secret order for cybernetic blue bodies.

Mother Shirley was lost in a trance again, seated in her suspended egg chair in front of the placid Finnley, and monologuing while absorbed in the analysis of the minute movements on the surface of the android’s face.

“Tell me, how do we learn things? How do you learn things? — It’s a rhetorical question, keep still, like I told you.
“It seems we speak too much about learning, and the learning process, and all that jazz, but… what if there are only states of knowing. We know, and * poof *, that’s it. I can’t for the dickens of me, figure out when I started to learn the things that led me to this current state of knowingness.”

She noticed, or thought she noticed a brief and slow ripple on the synthetic skin.

“Maybe like that, a ripple of relaxation… Maybe we look at it the wrong way, because we’re taught regular steps will lead to a result, so that in the end, you’ll know something… I call horseshit! How many lessons of space mandolin have I had, thanks to dear Mother, bless her devilish soul, and I’m still such a pathetic player! It can’t just be this, or it’d be like playing the roulette over and over, until… what? Don’t start with your tree, Mother, a damn acorn doesn’t get taught how to become more of itself. And when does it start to become a tree? At the first leaf? The first bark?

Waving her hand at the ghost idea of her Mother, she scrutinised Finnley more intently

“No you give me ideas, you little monster, you know that, with your peach face and smooth skin to die for. Never ever a sneeze… If I wanted to teach you how to sneeze, how to contract your body in an instant, and expel the devil or the aliens, whatever you’d like,… could I? Could you?

She pushed back the egg chair to restart the pendulum motion, and leaned backward with a contented look.

“I think that’s good enough for this session tonight, dearie. Bring me my cognac, remove my headpiece, and make my bed ready.”

I don’t know what possessed Mater, but I like the new version of her.
She’s a true inspiration. The way she commandeers, how she pays attention to the little things. If she wasn’t so wrinkled, I’d want to become her.
She doesn’t seem to need anyone in her life, maybe that’s why she’s so strong.

I don’t know how this all happened, but we now seem to do well enough. We have one paying guest (he seems to pay on time too, I don’t know where he gets that kind of money around that place), and it seems we can afford some manservant. Well, that’s something Aunt Idle would call that nice lady, surely not Mater. She was very kind to her.
Hope she doesn’t get funny ideas like she should become some sort of Mary Poppins or the like.

The way Mater was sad after her piggy passed, I realized having a dog is a huge commitment. I told Battista I lied and I was sorry, but we couldn’t have the puppy. I knew she wouldn’t mind, she likes to keep dogs around.

Instead, I thought I could start breeding guinea pigs; they don’t live too long. Everybody thought stealing the fish was just a prank, but I wanted to pawn it to kick-start my business. The sad truth is that it isn’t worth a dime.
Luckily, Bert who noticed me, said he would help.
I wonder why the only persons I can relate to are more than ten times my age… Sometimes I’m like an alien in my own family.

“We’re going under water, Mandrake, you’re sure you don’t need a suit?” Arona asked her cat.

All she needed was his permission to manifest a scuba diving suit for the cat, but the cat was putting on a brave face, and refused altogether.

“Well then, maybe you want to accompany me under a diving bell, I’m not too reassured on my on” she said with a sweet voice. Reverse psychology always worked with this one.

In no time, they were looking at the underwater cavebed, following the directions of the sabulmantium. The dragon egg enclosing the coloured sand seemed to shield them from the strange effects of the cave, and project fleeting images around the glass bell. Derelict places full of mould and cobwebs, alien places and animals.
Arona resisted being drawn by the images. Her years of living with dragons had taught her to navigate through illusions. That was then that she saw it.
The graceful turtle, silently swimming in front of them, in a curved line up and down, up and down. It was big, much bigger than Mandrake, but in no hurry to get there, wherever there was.

“Arona, do you hear that?” Mandrake’s voice was distant, and the sound of alarm was faint and muffled. “Aronaaaa!”

The impact of the rocks shattered the glass bell in millions of small pieces, that went floating like a wave of particles on the wind. Arona and Mandrake, in the big turtle’s wake were propelled through a narrow gurgling exit of the water that flushed them out of the cave into the thundering noise of a cascade.

Struggling with the current at first, Arona managed to let go, and finally emerged with her cat held firmly by the scruff of its neck. The current sent them on the shore of the pool of crystalline blue waters. In the middle of the pool, she could see the Cup, placed on a red cushion, surrounded by the mist of the waterfall, and glowing a vivid radiant light.

It all seems so easy… Arona was already wet, and the Cup was so close.

“Not so feeest, milady”
She had not seen the man emerge from the shadows of the cliffs. He was looking relatively harmless, but had a wild eye and a vagrant’s appearance.

“Leave me alone, old man.” was all she wanted to tell him. But for someone to be here, of all places, it had to mean something, and she’d better find it out using tact and diplomacy.

“Good day sir, may I inquire what you are doing here?”
“Fer sure, Ey em the Fisher Count but ye can call me Reney.”
“Mmm, I’ve heard about you. So you are real after all.”
“Indeed Ey em, quite real, huhu.”
“DON’T!” Arona and Mandrake shouted almost at the same time… too late, as the blinking parrot reappeared, flying over them and shrieking “HU HU, FUCK FUCK, HU HU.”

“I meant,… DON’T mind the blasted parrot, it’ll go away eventually. It must have a fleck of Sanso, I’m sure.” Arona said, matter-of-factly. “Now, what do I need to do to get to drink from the Cup, dear Sir?” she continued with the best composed smile she could.

“Oh, et is veeely easy, vely vely easy. Ye just need to esk nicely, and as ye already did, there ye go.”

Suspicion and doubts started to come back, as it all seemed much too easy. “What will happen when I drink from it? Will I be able to astral?”

“Oh well, Ey don’t know fer sure, Ey think it is just a nice decoration, but if ye believe herd enough, enything es possible.”

“Mandrake,” she turned to the cat “let’s go do some astralling.”

About a week ago, in the reserved section of the Storehouse of Exoteric Artefacts of Karmalott, Obax Winken was pondering in silence for the last hours over the nature of one of them.

Any artefacts found down there, in the Fog Abyss, was tightly controlled by the P’hope. Nobody wanted an alien object to unbalance the delicate structure of mass beliefs by prematurely introducing abrupt changes coming from visitors, stranded travellers of other times and realities.
Obax, as an erudite versed in interpreting the meaning of these objects, was entrusted with the classification and gauging of the danger that those objects could cause to the belief construct.
If an object was deemed troublesome, it would be tentatively destroyed, or if that failed, stored in the forbidden section. But in most cases, objects left by travellers would disintegrate if just a thought projection, and those objects that came with them usually didn’t pose much threat.

The one he was looking at looked like a strange mask, designed to be blown. He believed it was a cursed horn and couldn’t decide if it was in the interest of science to shelf it with its cursed energy, or remove the curse and release it to the masses for them to enjoy a swimming revolution…

“Lucius!” he called to his assistant. He was a bit deaf in one ear. LOGSBOTTOM! he called again.
“How would you call that strange trunk-like apparatus?”

Gliding through layers of consciousness, Belen carried her precious cargo of the Santa Maria and its birds towards her destination.
There were various variations of the same 2222, and she carefully adjusted the course along the 202 years gap, so as to swim to her favourite version of it. It required much love work on her part, addressing, piecing and peacing off many parts of human consciousness, while at the same time tenderly caring for the memories stored with her immense ghost body.
The 2020 version they had just left, she knew, was already on the proper track towards global enlightenment. There were still horrors, concerns and anxiety about the course of the future, but with a greater perspective, it looked like the positive actions were gaining momentum and leaning towards a brighter fuller and richer future.

She could feel the Contact Crystal pulsate steadily and it opened her blowhole chakra. Blowing her mind, as it were.

The Big Island was like a beacon, with the flows of lava rippling heatwave signatures in the ocean, and it didn’t take long to enter the stream that would lead them to the pod and the meeting point.

As she sensed they’d arrived in 2222, and that they were floating on the surface of a calm ocean, she gently opened the energy bubble sealing the ghost and alive cargo of birds and vegetation, so they could breathe in the pure air and enjoy discovering around.

“Belen, look at you, not a ounce more of blubber since we last met! You ought to tell me how you keep so fit”
“Batshatsassani!” Belen was pleased the see the great female orca who’d come to greet her.
“Still with your entourage, it seems” her friend said without a hint of malice, blowing a few rings of bubbles around in a relaxed manner. “Let me accompany you to the ceremony.”
“With great pleasure, dear. Rest assured, I won’t carry my entourage along for the time of the ceremony.”
“It would have been cumbersome, no?” Oftentimes humour (and irony in particular) were a lost subtlety on the orca’s mind. Belen just smiled to answer, revealing a great range of ghostwhite perfect baleens.

As they swam their way along the beautiful clear ocean, they were greeted by a pod of joyously rambunctious great dolphins, a good half size bigger than their common dolphins cousins she’d seen swimming near the coasts of Portugal. The leader of the pod was doing acrobatics to retrieve and play with a funny scarf made of colorful feathers. It was no surprise the dolphins were playing games, really. That or chasing food took the best of their time. But the scarf was the strangest thing Belen had seen in a long time and it triggered some kind of forgotten memory. Odd thing for her to not remember a memory, unless it was from another probable dimension… She followed the urge to ask.

“Were did they get that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing important… Four strange aquatic thingies went down earlier this morning, making a whole lot of noise around. They looked like one of those aliens, but so clumsy we thought they were probably sickly and left there to die by their tribe. The ‘phins took the fancy red gills from one of them.”
“Are you serious? Are they OK?” Belen huge heart felt panicky at the thought of the small creatures left to die without help.
“Of course they are, I knoooow we have to keep our reputation, you know. Where they are now, I’m not too sure. But the octopi from the camouflage squad are on it, following them. According to the last I know, the aliens have been lost for awhile in the underwater caves. When they’re exhausted, we’ll send them somewhere else… Can’t attract too much attention to ourselves, with the ceremony and all…”