This Changes Everything

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  About a week after this, I am at my chiropractor’s, Dr. Kyle Loder (great chiro!). As he adjusts my spine, he says, “My roommate says you’re famous.”

  “I am?” I reply, surprised.

  “Yeah. She says you were in the paper, talking about how the 'aliens come in peace.' She saw it,” he explains.

  “Well,” I tell him, “that was online, but not in the paper, exactly. Just on their website. Famous, huh? Good. That will help my book!” I talk regularly to him about my "novel."

  “Great!” he answers. “Let me read it when you’re finished!”

  “Sure,” I say, “you’re in it, now!”

  March 14, 2012

  The Onion, an online “fake news” outlet, spiced with cynicism, humor and insight, posts this today, complete with a tricked-out “photo” of a giant, glowing spaceship hovering over an Earth cityscape, with a tagline as if its report comes from the Planet Zarklom 12. I’ll quote some of the “article” below, because it’s so, well, pithy, in its scathing attack on Earth’s diplomatic stalemate and failure to act.

  Alien World To Help Out Syria

  Since This One Refuses To

  Frustrated by ‘the astonishing incapacity of earthlings to halt the rampant slaughter of their own kind’ in Syria, the emperor of Zarklom 12 announced Wednesday he had no choice but to dispatch his own intergalactic forces from 3 million light years away to end the senseless bloodshed.”

  …Supreme Emperor and Dynastic Overlord Thuu'l told reporters that while the human race appeared willing to sit idly by, the planet of Zarklom 12 could no longer turn a blind eye to the mounting casualties in the yearlong uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

  ’"We have monitored the ongoing violence in the region of your world known as Syria, and we find ourselves as disgusted by your reluctance to stop it as we are horrified by the deaths themselves," said Thuu'l, [Referring to] a UN report indicating al-Assad's forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians.”

  …Thuu'l assured uneasy reporters the operation was not a wholesale invasion of Earth but a very narrow offensive aimed at dislodging the al-Assad family from power; liberating cities such as Homs, which has been shelled by tanks and rockets unremittingly for a month; and freeing thousands of Syrians—many of them children—who have been imprisoned and tortured purely for political reasons.”

  …[T]he emperor said his infinitely superior military could complete [the mission] in ‘less than 20 of your Earth minutes.’"

  "...Do not expect us to save you from yourselves again. From what we've seen, you don't deserve it."

  "…Humans should not be permitted to do these terrible things to other humans," Thuu'l said. "Surely you must understand that much. You are sentient beings, correct?"

  It’s the kind of laughing that makes your stomach and heart hurt, yes? This may be a fake news story about the spaceship, but don’t you wish it were true? Syrian leaders really are killing their own civilians. It’s horrible. As of this article's date, Earth leaders are not stepping in to stop it. Inexcusable.

  I long for The Transition. It cannot come soon enough.