According to a reliable source, 37 million Americans have been abducted by aliens. Assuming that this is representative of the world, that equates to about 700 million abductions globally. This is a pretty big industry.
At present, it has to be said that alien abduction is badly organised. Pickups seem to be from random and unpredictable locations, often at inconvenient times. Dropoffs are frequently to the same location, which makes the whole thing rather pointless. There are no reliable accounts of in-flight meals or entertainment, and anal probing seems to happen on a more-or-less pot luck basis.
Clearly, this needs to change.
MaxCo. is therefore proud to offer, to the people of Earth and to extraterrestrials jointly, the first Alien Abduction Online Booking Service. Simply specify your preferred pickup location and time, and your destination. Select aisle or window, in- flight meal, and probing or non-probing. Luggage can be pre- booked for a modest fee.
Alien providers of extraterrestrial abduction services are expected to embrace this model with open tentacles. Finally, they will know when and where they can pick up willing abductees, rather than having to cruise around remote locations hoping to get lucky. A share of the booking fee goes to the aliens (revenue that would otherwise be unavailable to them); the abductee gets rapid transportation to their chosen destination; everyone's a winner. Sort of Uber for ETs.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2018 Alien Abduction Verification Bureau Alien_20Abduction_20Verification_20BureauComplementary [8th of 7, Oct 14 2018] ..to the tune of... https://www.youtube...watch?v=fzkU_ckRXHY [xandram, Oct 16 2018] Yay. I can vote. I can comment, I am halfbaked all over again. Yay. I love the idea, MB. I would love to be abducted. (Uber for ET's indeed).-- blissmiss, Oct 12 2018 My bright and perky "Hey, where you been, Max?" has turned into stammering hesitancy.
Perhaps I will instead keep an eye out for who might be missing.
{{hey, blissy!}}-- lurch, Oct 12 2018 Well, it is nice to be back.
Hey! Who took my G&T? I hadn't finished it yet!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2018 Dont be tempted..... My next door neighbour went on this trip and now he has an extra thumb growing on the back of my head. As if that's not bad enough, it keeps him awake at night unless he lets it count whatever cash he has in his wallet before going to bed. That dammed Max - should have gone to Butlin's Zombie Camp.-- xenzag, Oct 12 2018 I think Roundup will take care of that pesky thumb.
Wait - [xen] - you have neighbours?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2018 They only come out at night, and spend hours watching my centipede's ballet circus.-- xenzag, Oct 12 2018 Actually, what if we do a landing page for this. This might really work. Set a reasonable price, and it could be a serious thing. Simply pump the N2O gas into the house as they sleep, and let them wake up somewhere!-- Inyuki, Oct 12 2018 //now he has an extra thumb growing on the back of my head. As if that's not bad enough, it keeps him awake at night//
Perhaps you could help by putting your head somewhere else at night?-- Wrongfellow, Oct 12 2018 //pump the N2O gas into the house //
Someone would have to watch the henhouse Inyuki, or there'll be freelance rendition along those lines.-- reensure, Oct 13 2018 Obligatory preemptive 'can we sign up politician X to be abducted' posting.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 13 2018 I would pay more to have someone else obducted and sent far away-- dev45, Oct 13 2018 Really ? Well, [dev], you'll be pleased to know we accept all major credit and charge cards.-- 8th of 7, Oct 13 2018 I paid good money and they're still around, digging out all our garden worms and feeding them up their nostils. (see directly above this annotation)-- xenzag, Oct 13 2018 [dev45], If it were Trump, I'd go in halfsies. Oh yeah.-- blissmiss, Oct 13 2018 They only want people with a brain that doesn't require the use of a magnifying glass for examination so Trump is quite safe, unless they are also collecting toxic waste samples.-- xenzag, Oct 13 2018 Well, you could diversify into a service that abducts aliens...-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 14 2018 Or, <link>.-- 8th of 7, Oct 14 2018 + Great idea [ max] . I must say I have never been so happy to see everyone! Even you sweetie!-- xandram, Oct 14 2018 Aww, shucks, [xan], goshdernit, but I'm glad to be back.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 14 2018 Doesn't Icke already offer a fee for this. Or is it protection money from hearing him speak?-- 4and20, Oct 15 2018 Do people still get abducted by aliens? I thought the frequency of alien abduction had reduced over the last 20 years, in direct correlation with the growth in smartphone usage and people thus carrying high-quality cameras around with them every moment of the day. Perhaps a more pressing problem is this apparent crippling shyness amongst alien civilisations, suggesting an urgent need for some sort of alien therapy service.-- hippo, Oct 16 2018 //Do people still get abducted by aliens? // I agree, things have tailed off a little since the rise of things like Trustpilot. I suspect this reflects the disorganised and ill-managed nature of ad-hoc abductions. Another problem has been branding (or rather the lack of it) - nobody says "Oh yeah, I flew Xrtl to Washington and it was great, you should try them." I firmly believe that the AABS can turn this industry around.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 16 2018 The big problem I see here is going to be the right level of security. If this service exists, it needs to exist as a shadow entity, like the MIB's. But as it is a service, someone needs to know how to contact them. In this day of too much information, misinformation campaigns, and few secrets that don't end up dredged up, put through a wood-chipper, dragged through coal tar, translated into red-state/blue-state histrionics, shipped to Guam, translated into 37 languages, and force-fed to Russian Facebook zombies all instantaneously by a smartphone virus app resident in all Google devices, managing exactly the right amount of messaging to the right consumer in order to maintain that grey level of existence could become tricky. You don't want everyone signing up as there simply aren't enough aliens, space travel is still expensive as heck and only a few data points for anal probing are really necessary. But you don't want to cut off the flow either with too much red tape.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 16 2018 random, halfbakery