h a l f b a k e r yExpensive, difficult, slightly dangerous, not particularly effective... I'm on a roll.
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Noone is quite sure if alien abduction stories are for real. Here's how to find out.
Set up a huge, shadowy, secret quasi-military organisation. Staff it with mildly psychotic and paranoid law enforcement types with a sprinkling of army officers and mad scientists. Make sure it is lavishly resourced
and funded.
Assess all those people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Build up a character and demographic profile. Then, systematically kidnap all those who fit the profile. This is best done at night in their own homes, or in remote rural areas with no witnesses. Drug the kidnapees, then subject them to exhaustive and invasive medical testing. Take tissue samples. Implant small high-tech tags and biofeedback monitoring devices in odd places in their bodies. Use more drugs and post-hypnotic suggestion to erase as far as possible all memory of the events and return them to their previous locations. Then keep them under surveillance.
Periodically, re-kidnap your victims and repeat the medical tests. Check that the implants have not been tampered with and that no new ones have been added. Interrogate them under drugs so they have only a very confused recollection of what happened. Ask them about the aliens. Ask them if they remember being abducted, and exactly what happened. Upload the logs from the monitoring devices. Repeat all the medical tests.
If they start to remember stuff or go to the newspapers, use falsified records to discredit them, or convince them they are mentally ill. Get them admitted to mental hospitals where you can reinforce their existing brainnwashing. Keep them on medication, for years if necessary.Bug their homes, tap their phones and open their mail to keep a check on who they're in contact with.
Pretty soon, you will know if there are any real aliens or not.
Un Fortean Force
http://www.halfbake...N_20Fortean_20Force
A less invasive equivalent. [Aristotle, Jun 20 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]
[link]
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Hey, 8th -- ever watch "The X-Files"? You've more or less summarized all seven seasons, in your single (albeit excellent) idea. |
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Personally, I live in fear of such a thing. I'd rather not have shadowy government figures showing up on my doorstep at all hours to drag me off to their secret underground testing labs, thank you very much. The last thing I need is to let anyone -- government employee or not -- know that I'm actually a well-disguised silicon-based host organism from the fifth astral plane. |
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You didn't really believe that natural humans could write this well, did you? |
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your ability to spell certainly casts some doubts as to your origins.... |
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RE: your first sentence. I'm quite sure they are not real. This, after exhaustive investigation of the topic. |
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Miss Percent... silicon, hm? Looks very natural. |
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By the way, I always look forward to your writing. I'd enjoy reading the list of ingredients on the side of a box of Pop-Tarts if you wrote it. |
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1percent: Yes, we watch the X-files. Although in a previous job, it was more like a training and orientation video than actual entertainment. |
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Entertrainment ? Anyone thought of that one ? |
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One more thing... Blanchard wants to see you in his office tomorrow morning. You know better than to talk about the bureau on an open channel. |
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st3f: Sorry, can't make the morning. We're booked for a session with the long silver prober thingie, and an implant exchange. |
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Besides, it's cool to discuss ourselves. No-one believes we exist ..... |
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According to my monthly magazine "The Survivalist (incorporating UFO-Watch and Modern Surgical Techniques)", this sort of thing is going on all the time, so baked! |
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"Entertainment" is essentially all there is to the abduction theory, and all I've managed to derive from reading all the supposed experts on the topic. Budd Hopkins (who asserts that a former Secretary General of the UN is a regular abductee), John Mack, Whitley Streiber... |
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Briefly taking your idea seriously for a moment, I don't see how this would verify abductions. |
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Waugsqueke: People lie, for all sorts of reasons. They make stuff up. |
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If people really do get abducted, the implants would detect and record and record the events - increased radiation levels, cortisol levels (stress related), changes in blood chemistry, unusual chemicals - whatever. This would be independany of any conscious narrative from the abductees. Also the information givven under hypnosis might, and we stress might, be more reliable than their conscious "memories" although this is open to debate. Routine surveillance might even spot them being abducted and be able to record objective evidence. |
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Seems a lot of trouble just to be told "This person has not been abducted by aliens" 479,000 times. |
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Angel: "Your tax dollars working for you". |
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"You have to find something for people with minds like this to do, otherwise they might do anything ..... " (Terry Pratchett). |
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Would you rather they were out there trying to run the trains and the airlines and national security and important stuff like that ? Think of it as a sort of care in the community for officious paranoid types. The ones who aren't bright enough to be traffic wardens. |
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If the aliens are smart enough to evade all security systems, intruder alarms, CCTV, radar, spy satellites, photographers, television news crews and evil megacorporations seeking the technology to power their laser cyborg ninja warriors, then who's to say the aliens won't get around this just as easily? |
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Pottedstu: Easy. Hire some aliens to run the Bureau. |
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And before you ask, it's easy to hire aliens. You put an ad on the Situations Vacant page of the National Enquirer. That's run by aliens, too. They will help you with the wording. After all, you don't want to end up hiring some alien-school dropout with a fake CV. |
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Old idea. not too productive either, why do'nt you try abducting some aliens instead? |
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Ahh, the "trickster god" strikes again. What mischief will he get up to next? |
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"loki" is the trickster....isn't "loke" a Hawaiian folk singer? |
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My funny Halfbakers ...
Sweet, comic Halfbakers ... |
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I actually ripped the term "silicon-based life form" directly from an X-Files episode: something about an entity living in a volcano. Scully examined the entity (or its cells, droppings, whatever), and said -- completely straight-faced -- that the organism could not have come from Earth. All living things on this planet are carbon-based, she explained; if it's silicon-based, it has to come from somewhere ... ELSE. |
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I thought I'd die laughing. It was all the funnier because the actors didn't play the line as a joke, but rather as a simple scientific fact. To someone who'd grown up in Los Angeles, there was only one way to take that. |
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[8th]: Thank you for confirming my suspicions! I have an uncle-by-marriage who writes for the Enquirer, and I've always wondered about our strange rapport. The man is truly otherworldly ... his knowledge about what Julia Roberts wears to the mall could not have come from a natural source. |
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'Silicon based life forms' have been around in science fiction for decades. Star Trek itself had the Horta in the 60's, and it was old before that. |
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1Percent: That sort of stuff makes us wince, too. |
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StarChaser: Agreed. We seem to recall that Isaac Asimov wrote about an asteroid-living silicon based life form called a SilliCony (dreadful pun) which predates the Horta. |
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At least these days we are largely (but not entirely) spared the depressing prenomenon of journalists using the phrase "silicone chips" ... |
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"Easy. Hire some aliens to run the Bureau."
and with that throwaway comment, this idea just became WTCTTISITM[Men in Black]WIBNIIWR. |
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sappho: I know, but the irony in the idea appeals to me. The whole thing is akin to digging holes in the garden to see whether you have any holes in the garden. |
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well, do you? (your honour) |
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I'll just go and check... |
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Sappho: sorry about the flippancy. |
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st3f: We liked the idea because it's neatly Hermetic, like a lot of New age stuff. It actually generates the exact phenomena it purports to investigate. And it's just crazy enough to be true, which is very frightening. Having made direct observation of the way governments intentionally mislead their citizens (often for very poor justification - almost invariably in an attempt not to further fray their already threadbare cloak of credibility) it wouldn't take much to convince us that something like this actually happens. We suppose we will know for sure when the Men In Black turn up for their Little Chat ..... |
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