There’s A Planet In My Soup


by
Robert Liberty©2006

It’s one of those days again. I hear the cicadas begin to scrape the white-blue sky then abruptly give it up and catch their breaths, slaves to their next attempt, still unable to fight genetic programming. I notice a thin swarm of bloated flies hover sluggishly until they fall from the sky, dead from the heat. They’ll never learn either.

The animals are long gone, only insects left to hoist the banner of multi-cellular life on this festering bulb of dissolving putrescence. They’re not long for it, though. The heat’s killing everything. People? Well, there’s me. There’s always solace in that inside joke for the sad of spirit. The rest of humanity; who knows?

This is a cautionary tale, but then aren’t they all? Anyway, I think I owe at least an explanation. That’s the reason for this DVD. Whether it’ll ever be watched, some time in the future, or linger as a whisper of our past, I don’t know. But at least it’s giving me the catharsis of screaming into this camera about how utterly stupid the world was before it ceased to exist.

I remember exactly when things got this way. It was in the year 2009; I know for sure, because it was on my birthday, July 16, that year that they put me in this underground storage facility as punishment for . . . But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name is Bill O’Ryan. I used to be a famous TV personality. I won awards for taking a stand on the hard issues and asking the tough questions. I was host of a famous news show on PNN; the Partial News Network. People listened to me.

Let me take you on a journey into the recent past. Sometime in the mid - ‘70s a group of paleoclimatologists began making noises to the press about a global ice age that was going to make the last one look like a dip in an unheated pool.

They said the sun’s rays would begin to deflect before reaching the earth’s surface, due to the vast quantities of pollutants in the atmosphere. This was going to drop the mean temperature of the globe.

But before that could happen, the polar ice caps were expected to melt because there were no restrictions on industrial pollution and nuclear proliferation. This was going to cause wide-spread flooding as the level of the oceans rose. The flood waters would then freeze before they had the chance to recede, due to the fact the sun’s rays couldn’t get through the clogged atmosphere to heat things up.

Well, nobody paid much attention at the time, because in their calculations, the paleoclimatolgists estimated this ice age would begin from anywhere between ten years and ten thousand years. Then there was that other group of scientists in the 1990s who warned about global warming. The Greenhouse Effect was going to kill us all and the whales were trying to warn us, and nobody cared. Between the looming Ice Age and Global Warming, who could blame them.

Anyway, people were too interested in UFOs to be bothered. I remember there wasn’t a day went by without someone reporting a spacecraft, an occupant sighting, a cattle mutilation or an alien abduction. I was particularly interested in UFOs because I wrote a book debunking it once.

For years earth stations had been picking up signals from space; nothing new in that. (Did you know that as far back as 1947 UFOs were crashing on Earth? As God is my witness!) But, recently scientists around the world had been noticing a greater percentage of randomly spaced radio signals pulsing at odd intervals, which led them to believe there was something out there trying to communicate with us.

This came to a head in the early millennium when NASA and the European Space Agency (even the New Mother Russia) formed an alliance and built a space probe called The Messenger.

It was designed to transmit audio-visual signals on laser pulses, the beam of which spun on the satellite‘s axis, while the satellite itself described a wide elliptical orbit of the earth. All very technical and boring unless you’re a wild-eyed scientist, yourself. The transmission was blatant propaganda.

“We are from the solar system Sol, on the third planet from the sun. We wish to communicate our designs for peace.” What a crock, since we were just beginning another round of limited nuclear air and missile strikes in the Middle East and eradicating three quarters of Somalia.

The Messenger was equipped for reception as well as transmission. One morning in the Spring of 2008, stations in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., Canada and the Ukraine received a message from a delegation of aliens who had intercepted our orbiting TV station.

They appeared to be non-hostile. (At least that was the consensus once the world got over its shock that they were really out there at all.) They communicated a desire to meet with our leaders. Of course, anybody in the know took it for granted they’d been meeting clandestinely with various governments for decades, but this was prima facie proof to the world.

So, now we’ve got a near international incident over where the Aliens should land. The Russians, the U.S., Asia and the rest were all on the verge of nuclear holocaust until the space visitors suggested a gathering of interested countries in Ottawa, Canada.

The first real miracle occurred when Earth’s politicians fell silent, in unison for a sustained period of time, while the ship landed. And what a monstrous, ship it was! Bigger than ten aircraft carriers, and sleek as a cat’s whisker. The second miracle occurred when the aliens beamed down a small delegation with the news that the looming and ecological catastrophe could be averted with their help.

I covered that, and subsequent meetings and conferences for my cable cast, dedicating a full month of daily specials called, “Earth vs. The Flying Saucers,” until, an agreement was reached.

The accord, I later found out, consisted of the aliens (they were from the Pleiades system) modifying all of our nuclear generation and fossil fuel plants, power stations and weapons systems, into creating a sort of shield around the earth. This, they said, would create a bubble effect that would keep the temperatures around the globe in status quo.

And what did they want in return? This’ll kill you. All they wanted was to take our children with them on an intergalactic field trip to educate them in the ways of cosmic knowledge and interplanetary societal etiquette.

I’m no psychologist or detective, (maybe not even a journalist) but you don’t need a lie detector to know when a slimy, blue creep from Alpha Centauri is trying to pull a fast one. That’s when I started my anti-alien campaign on my news show.

Nobody’s going to glad hand you about saving your world unless there’s something pretty big in it for himself. Educate our children my eye. Eat them is more like it. And that hooey about modifying our nuclear installations was so transparent it was laughable, but the world’s leaders were completely taken in.

Well, I wasn’t buying any guff from a planet of liberal, globe-hugging spaceniks in silver, lame suits with ulterior motives tucked up their assertions.

The same day I learned about the agreement I slipped my mini-DV recorder, this one I’m talking into now, into my camera case and set out to infiltrate the hotel the aliens were staying at. I was after an exclusive interview.

I got through a phalanx of security and publicity people and finally into the penthouse elevator. The next thing I knew, I was on the top floor and the elevator door was opening. The place was enormous. A circular hall done in plush carpet, all a stunning off-white with pale green walls and drapes as complement.

There was only one door. I knew that was the penthouse so, I walked right up and knocked.

I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. The door swept gracefully open, and there, standing before me was one of the blue aliens. I had never gotten a chance before to see one up close. Sure I had a hundred hours of video of them making nice with politicians and military-industrial moguls, but I had never been that close to one.

Christ they smelled funny. Like three-day old hamburger. Anyway, I said to the thing, “Excuse me sir, my name is ...”

He raised His hand and said, “No need to introduce yourself. I’ve seen your show. As a matter of fact, we’ve been monitoring your planet for decades now. We’ve all had ample opportunity to see your show.”

Sure I was flattered, but the guy said it through his nose His mouth didn’t move once, just his nostrils. He invited me in for a drink. I said I’d come in, but I didn’t want anything to drink, thank you.

He offered me a chair, so I sat down. He glided a few inches off the floor to another chair across from me and lowered himself into it. He? I’m calling the thing ‘he’. After a minute of shuffling and changing positions I stared down at the carpet and noticed, “You know this rug is the same color as the one in the hall?”

“Thank you,” he said.

“May I be frank?”

“By all means,” he said. “Let us be frank.” Starting to sound like a cheap romance, isn’t it?

I said, “You guys may have the rest of the world eating out of your hands, but not me. I think you’re up to something we’re not going to like.”

He looked shocked. I think he looked shocked, who knows with aliens? He said

“Mr. O’Ryan, all we want is to protect ourselves. You see not only are you in danger of an imminent ice age, the planets in your system would surely align perpendicularly to your sun causing the Jupiter Effect your race was expecting in your year 1981.

“This would cause your frozen planet to crack apart and explode, causing catastrophic repercussions throughout the entire universe. We really don’t care if you blow yourselves up, but we shouldn’t like to go up with you. ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ Your man, Newton.“

“You’re full of sh__ (the network bleeped me on that one). Our man Groucho Marx.”

He chuckled to himself ironically, “No, Mr. O’Ryan, and I sincerely doubt that you are either. Not yet.”

I didn’t like his attitude. I didn’t like his looks either. I kept waiting for him to blink, but he didn’t have eyelids.

“Alright, what’s the story about taking all the earth kids away for five years?”

‘Your race is just stumbling into its own regarding space travel and exploration. We merely want to teach your children the advances we’ve made in the area, so they do not make the same mistakes we’ve made. It’s all very simple and logical. Nothing sinister about it.”

“Why not take our scientists”“

“They are far too advanced in their own ways of thinking to accept change so soon. They may misuse the knowledge, as they always do. And your children are your future scientists in any case. We only wish to instill in them a sense of cosmic harmony and obligation to other life forms.”

I must admit it made sense, but I still couldn’t figure how it would take five years. If they were so advanced, couldn’t they just transplant the knowledge with a Vulcan mind-meld or something?

The snotty bastard said, “This is not science fiction, Mr. O’Ryan. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

What the hell did he know about Rome? We talked for a while longer until I heard a beeping noise like those little pocket televisions make. He took a small box from somewhere, (he didn’t have any pockets in his silver jumpsuit, so I don’t know where he got it). Then he looked at me and said, “We have a visitor Mr. O’Ryan. I hope you don’t mind.”

Why should I mind, it was his room.

A few seconds later another alien materialized on the rug, or a few inches above it. This one was different. It was about five feet tall and unlike all the others I’d seen or photographed, it wasn’t blue or bald or lidless and earless. It too, had green eyes and a silver jumpsuit, but it filled the thing out more pleasingly than the others. It was definitely a female and a nice one. She didn’t smell like hamburger either. I instinctively rummaged through my pockets for a breath mint.

He introduced her as Andorra, and me as who I was. It was during the introduction that I realized I’d been talking to the alien for over half an hour and I didn’t even know his name. I remarked as to this oversight in etiquette and he bowed low in his chair and hummed something about being Ictus. I thanked him and reached out my hand to shake his, but I caught myself in time. He smiled into the mini-cam and his shoulders heaved slightly with subdued laughter.

She was a stunningly attractive female – of any species. Her hair was silver like her suit, she looked slightly Asian with her high, cheek bones and almond eyes, she had a pert and perky little bum and nicely pointed - well, you’d have to watch the show. A guy could do worse. Ictus told me she was his public relations officer, and if I had any questions after our interview, she’d be glad to accommodate me.

I was still looking down into her jump suit, when I found myself saying, “You know, I still don’t really believe any of that ice age stuff, and your Jupiter Effect story is a fairy tale. What are you really up to?”

Andorra slunk up to me, caressed my right arm and eased into my lap. She stared into my eyes for a while trying to blink seductively, but she couldn’t blink either. Then she said in a soft purring voice (from her mouth, not her nose); “But, Mr. O’Ryan ...”

I said, “Call me Bill.”

“But, Bill, what other motive could we have?” she asked while getting up and guiding me into an adjoining room. I guessed the interview was over. It’s amazing how many similarities the species have in common. It’s amazing what she could do with her nostrils!

More ships arrived, and for the next six months the aliens buzzed in and out of every nuclear and fossil fuel installation in the world. Their work was supervised, or rather watched, by our own scientists, who couldn’t have known their elbows from a foundation trilogy, anyway. They had already taken all our children away in their vast space fortresses.

I kept plugging away at them on my show, though. I kept right on calling them the alien menace. I got so hot most of the world was sending me death threats, so they locked me away here in the anti-nuke storage bunker. The aliens must have been laughing up their sleeves when I was taken away in disgrace.

A month before the global catastrophes were supposed to come into effect the aliens called another general conference. I saw it on the monitor in my main compartment. They announced the completion of their work here on Earth. They thanked us all for our cooperation and support and assured us again that our children were in good hands and would return to a better world. Then came the zinger.

On international video, they told the world that for too many years we’d been messing around with things we didn’t have the maturity to understand. We’d been setting off nuclear devices for over seventy years without the least inkling of the damage we’d been causing the rest of the universe. While we were playing around with our toys, we were also disrupting the time space continuum, throwing everything out of whack.

As Ictus told me that day in the hotel suite, they didn’t give a damn if we killed ourselves, but we were playing with galactic fire.

It was decided that we be stopped. So they got together and appointed a delegation from the races to visit us and manipulate our world. The children would be returned, should they choose, when it became safe again for human life. We, however, were to suffer the full force of our actions. Oh, they were smart all right. They weren’t going to kill us off themselves, they were going to watch us safely kill ourselves. They estimated no more than five years until we were all dead.

You want to know what they did to us? They hooked up a bypass from all our sewage treatment plants to lead directly to secret underground biological stations, powered by our own atomic energy. The purpose - to analyze and clone our own human waste.

First the diseases exploded across the globe, then the air became hot and un-breathable. Almost everything that breathed died within the first two years, and by then the feces was only up to our necks. Even with most of the population dead and no longer producing, the machines keep on cloning. They thought of everything, didn’t they?

But, I’m safe here for the rest of my days. I’ve got a life support system, food and clean water, chemical toilets and I’ve got this mini-DV recorder. I get lonely, though. I really wouldn’t mind a visit from Andorra again. I dream about her. But, whenever I think of her I also think of Ictus and shudder.

I told you this was a cautionary tale. I can’t forget how Ictus laughed at me, with that twist of irony, when I told him he was full of shit.

The End