CHAPTER 19

BODY SNATCHING

Ah, the Elagabalians are here. Excellent. I was going to talk about their invasion.

In the Earth year 1970 the Elagabalians infiltrated the city called San Francisco. From this base, they proceeded to kidnap Earthlings and replace them with duplicates spawned from plant pods.

The duplicates looked and acted like their human counterparts. They were identical, except they showed a lack of emotion and initiative. It worked out okay until the Earth army showed up.

But now that you guys are here I have to ask, why did you bother?

(No answer.)

I just don’t get what the point of all this was. I mean, your big plan is to replace the humans with other humans that think and act more like you do?

Suppose for a moment you had succeeded. What was the next step? The planet would still be run by the same species, more or less, and have the same infrastructure, the same technology level, the same environment.

What would you have changed? They think like you now. Does that mean new human hybrids were going to welcome you as their new overlord? That would have been nice for the ego. What would you have gained? The adulation of six billion inhabitants on a backwater planet?

This goes back to that non-discussion about motive. You guys don’t want to tell me what’s so important about this place? Fine. But ask yourselves if this approach was going to achieve that ultimate goal. This is a lot of hard work, replacing all six billion plus people on a planet. Even if you manage to pull off this scheme, does it bring you closer to your goal? Was it worth the effort of staying underground and hidden while you carried this out? I’m having a hard time seeing any gain that might be even remotely worth the effort.

The Elagabalians looked like they were out to take away human individuality. But they didn’t really do that. Even if those human hybrids just retained the memories necessary to do their basic jobs, then they were still individuals.

Did you take away the emotion and passion from the humans? That’s a very stupid idea. What good would they have been then? It’s passion and emotion that motivate us to do a better than average job. It’s bad enough you went through all this work just to get a planet full of technologically backward slaves, but if you remove their emotions you’re getting a planet full of technologically backward slaves who don’t care about their work and do a crappy job. There’s a terran species of insect called an ant. It lives in a collective and has no individuality. And the only thing it can produce is a giant mound of dirt.

This scheme already failed miserably, but let’s review what it would have taken in order for it to have worked. First, you needed to stay hidden while you transformed the entire human population. Your new hybrids had to have obedience, yet at the same time enough individuality to perform some useful task, and enough emotion that they’ll to do that task effectively. Finally, you had to import the technology necessary for them to actually perform that useful job, whatever the hell it was. Because, if you just left the Earth as it is, it’s still centuries away from producing advanced spacefaring tech.

The chances were astronomically against all these things going right. In this case, phase one went tits up. The humans figured out what was happening and crushed the San Francisco base.

Trust me when I say you got off easy. Just think about what might have happened had the screw up occurred later in the process. Suppose you had assumed you had gained Earth’s loyalty and had started to import your tech, only for their “loyalty” to suddenly falter. All of a sudden, instead of a new race of slaves, you have had a new race of competitors or, worse yet, enemies. And you have just given them the tech necessary to launch an attack against you. You know it’s a crap plan when a partial success can lead to your utter annihilation.

So I ask again, what was the purpose of this?

(Throughout this whole tirade the Egabalian delegate has been silent with a blank stare on his face.)

WAR HAWK: Hello?

(War Hawk now stands in front and waves his hand in front of the Egabalian. There is no response. It’s at this point that War Hawk noticed some green sprouts growing out of one of the Egabalian’s six ears.)

WAR HAWK: That answers that question.