Space Invaders
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: None.
Description: The causes of everything from the communications explosion to obesity are revealed.
_____________________________________________________________________
To the President of the Galactic Council, Sol Quadrant:
A petition by Plasmodium Terra (PT), formerly Plasmodium Kyklos to reclassify homo sapiens (also known as ‘humans’) as sentient but unintelligent beings.
Humans have inhabited the planet known as Earth for about thirty million years (a hundred thousand of their years). In that time they have advanced to the point where they have discovered nuclear fission, but have failed to harness fusion. They have chemical rockets for exploration of the nearer part of the solar system but do not understand warp drive. They have discovered DNA but, until very recently, they thought that eighty per cent of their genome was padding.
Since we, the pt, arrived fifteen thousand years ago (fifty of their years; AD 1962 by their calendar) we have used members of their race as hosts and have taken over control of their central nervous systems.
Humans tolerate and even encourage warfare amongst themselves and accept, with equanimity, the exploitation of both themselves and all the other species sharing the planet. Some of our best minds argued from this that the human species was not sentient but we discovered sufficient evidence of altruistic behaviour to lead us to accept that humans are sentient though clearly unintelligent. We argue that they should not be allowed to control their own destiny but should be put under the benevolent control of the PT.
We are protozoa and our natural habitat is the gut of animals. When we arrived on Earth we selected humans to be our hosts because they were the most advanced species on Earth. We were particularly impressed with their mobility. They are bi-pedal and they have developed somewhat primitive means of transport that allow them to travel widely about the planet. This was particularly important in the early days when we were anxious to extend our settlements as widely as possible. It was some time before we realised that they did not consider themselves to be animals but a different species controlling the planet.
They had a rather crude communications network based on cables and electrical currents although there were plans to provide satellites that would speed up communications. Their understanding of their own bodies was primitive (they cannot even modify their own genome!): they knew little about protozoa infection and had virtually no defence against our preferred, water-borne method of colonisation.
The human life is in excess of twenty thousand years (seventy of their years) so we were able to use a single host for many generations. . At first we were overwhelmed by the electro-magnetic noise that arose from almost all of their artefacts but we soon adjusted our genome to make us more tolerant.
When we explored their central nervous system we found that they had little conception of its intricacies and potential so we set up two teams of scientist to improve our environment by modifying our hosts.
Communication was the first area we considered. They have what they call ‘language’, an inefficient means of contact between individuals. Using language, their young have to be trained for up to six thousand years in order that knowledge can be passed from one generation to the next.
They had most of the building blocks for a personal communications system and we quickly decided to stimulate certain individual human beings to be innovators. Our first experiments had little success. We first tried to stimulate invention in drug users but they were unreliable and inconsistent. We regret that we have been unable to reverse the addiction. Americans provided our main experimental group because of their paranoia: fortunately they blamed their human suppliers for the ‘bad trips’.
We next chose college students, particularly the ones described as ‘geeks’ by their fellows. The United States again proved a fruitful source of subjects, many of whom have become rich and famous as a result of our manipulation.
This proved to be a wise choice. Mobile phones were our first success and we have gone on to stimulate the development of smart phones. We also inspired the world-wide web and inter-personal systems like Facebook and Twitter.
All of our colonies are now in daily touch through these social networks so that our innovations can be implemented rapidly all over Earth. Sadly, we have had no success in replacing language with what they call ‘telepathy’ because of deep-seated prejudice.
The second team of scientists concentrated on altering the hosts to make them more suitable to our needs. We observed that the more physically active humans were causing some stress amongst our people. Secretions called endorphins stimulated by exercise in humans made us ill: not life-threateningly ill but enough to slow our development by statistically significant amounts. We made some experimental changes to activity levels and quickly established that the great majority of humans would gladly give up exercise if they were presented with television sports programmes. We can, of course, no longer use sports people or regular gym users as hosts but they represent a small proportion of humans especially in the developed nations.
We adjusted eating habits to increase the fat content of the hosts since this improved the health and well-being of our people. I am pleased to report that more than half the population of the richest countries will be obese in another three thousand years (ten human years). Overweight humans have a shorter life-span but our scientists are working hard to overcome this glitch.
Our only real problem was with e-coli, the bacteria that operate the human digestive system. They found our larvae particularly appetising and we were forced to move to the human liver to incubate our offspring. The early stages of liver disease provide a perfect environment for our hatcheries so we have stimulated ‘binge drinking’ of alcohol. We now have a satisfactorily large number of hosts in years five to eight thousand (twenty to twenty five human years) of their life cycle well along the road to liver failure.
It is our contention that humans are happier now than before we arrived and we ask the Galactic Council to grant the PT Prime Species status on Earth recognising humans as a useful but inferior species.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The causes of everything from the communications explosion to obesity are revealed.
_____________________________________________________________________
To the President of the Galactic Council, Sol Quadrant:
A petition by Plasmodium Terra (PT), formerly Plasmodium Kyklos to reclassify homo sapiens (also known as ‘humans’) as sentient but unintelligent beings.
Humans have inhabited the planet known as Earth for about thirty million years (a hundred thousand of their years). In that time they have advanced to the point where they have discovered nuclear fission, but have failed to harness fusion. They have chemical rockets for exploration of the nearer part of the solar system but do not understand warp drive. They have discovered DNA but, until very recently, they thought that eighty per cent of their genome was padding.
Since we, the pt, arrived fifteen thousand years ago (fifty of their years; AD 1962 by their calendar) we have used members of their race as hosts and have taken over control of their central nervous systems.
Humans tolerate and even encourage warfare amongst themselves and accept, with equanimity, the exploitation of both themselves and all the other species sharing the planet. Some of our best minds argued from this that the human species was not sentient but we discovered sufficient evidence of altruistic behaviour to lead us to accept that humans are sentient though clearly unintelligent. We argue that they should not be allowed to control their own destiny but should be put under the benevolent control of the PT.
We are protozoa and our natural habitat is the gut of animals. When we arrived on Earth we selected humans to be our hosts because they were the most advanced species on Earth. We were particularly impressed with their mobility. They are bi-pedal and they have developed somewhat primitive means of transport that allow them to travel widely about the planet. This was particularly important in the early days when we were anxious to extend our settlements as widely as possible. It was some time before we realised that they did not consider themselves to be animals but a different species controlling the planet.
They had a rather crude communications network based on cables and electrical currents although there were plans to provide satellites that would speed up communications. Their understanding of their own bodies was primitive (they cannot even modify their own genome!): they knew little about protozoa infection and had virtually no defence against our preferred, water-borne method of colonisation.
The human life is in excess of twenty thousand years (seventy of their years) so we were able to use a single host for many generations. . At first we were overwhelmed by the electro-magnetic noise that arose from almost all of their artefacts but we soon adjusted our genome to make us more tolerant.
When we explored their central nervous system we found that they had little conception of its intricacies and potential so we set up two teams of scientist to improve our environment by modifying our hosts.
Communication was the first area we considered. They have what they call ‘language’, an inefficient means of contact between individuals. Using language, their young have to be trained for up to six thousand years in order that knowledge can be passed from one generation to the next.
They had most of the building blocks for a personal communications system and we quickly decided to stimulate certain individual human beings to be innovators. Our first experiments had little success. We first tried to stimulate invention in drug users but they were unreliable and inconsistent. We regret that we have been unable to reverse the addiction. Americans provided our main experimental group because of their paranoia: fortunately they blamed their human suppliers for the ‘bad trips’.
We next chose college students, particularly the ones described as ‘geeks’ by their fellows. The United States again proved a fruitful source of subjects, many of whom have become rich and famous as a result of our manipulation.
This proved to be a wise choice. Mobile phones were our first success and we have gone on to stimulate the development of smart phones. We also inspired the world-wide web and inter-personal systems like Facebook and Twitter.
All of our colonies are now in daily touch through these social networks so that our innovations can be implemented rapidly all over Earth. Sadly, we have had no success in replacing language with what they call ‘telepathy’ because of deep-seated prejudice.
The second team of scientists concentrated on altering the hosts to make them more suitable to our needs. We observed that the more physically active humans were causing some stress amongst our people. Secretions called endorphins stimulated by exercise in humans made us ill: not life-threateningly ill but enough to slow our development by statistically significant amounts. We made some experimental changes to activity levels and quickly established that the great majority of humans would gladly give up exercise if they were presented with television sports programmes. We can, of course, no longer use sports people or regular gym users as hosts but they represent a small proportion of humans especially in the developed nations.
We adjusted eating habits to increase the fat content of the hosts since this improved the health and well-being of our people. I am pleased to report that more than half the population of the richest countries will be obese in another three thousand years (ten human years). Overweight humans have a shorter life-span but our scientists are working hard to overcome this glitch.
Our only real problem was with e-coli, the bacteria that operate the human digestive system. They found our larvae particularly appetising and we were forced to move to the human liver to incubate our offspring. The early stages of liver disease provide a perfect environment for our hatcheries so we have stimulated ‘binge drinking’ of alcohol. We now have a satisfactorily large number of hosts in years five to eight thousand (twenty to twenty five human years) of their life cycle well along the road to liver failure.
It is our contention that humans are happier now than before we arrived and we ask the Galactic Council to grant the PT Prime Species status on Earth recognising humans as a useful but inferior species.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.